[pkg-s48-maint] list to do

Lionel Elie Mamane lionel@mamane.lu
Tue May 3 16:45:01 2005


On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 03:36:15PM +0200, Jorgen Schaefer wrote:


> I have never used Alioth before, so if there's anything I should
> look out for, please tell me. What other things do we want to do
> with the project, except for using the mailing list and the
> repository space?

I don't see any other service we'd want from Alioth on short term, but
Alioth can give us:

 - surveys

 - forums

 - task manager / patch manager / bug manager

 - CVS repo, with public anonymous read-only pserver

 - news items that go to the project's page and on Alioth's homepage

 - documentation repository

 - FTP space and various other file distribution schemes

 - "statistics" about our activity on the project

> It is non-trivial to get Scheme 48 to install multiple copies of the
> same version. The paths that control everything are semi-distributed
> thorough the build process. Unless you think it would be
> definitively needed, I won't try to create versioned packages.

It would be nice, but it is not essential. I'm surprised it is much
more difficult for s48 than it is for scsh, though.

> We wanted to use tla or darcs for the version control. At the
> moment, I use dpatch for the Scheme 48 package, and I wonder why we
> (I) should use a more elaborate setup at all - I never used a
> revision control system for my packages yet,

And you tell me that *now*? Couldn't you have mentioned this *before*
we started discussing which VC system we would use and how?

> and it looks like it requires more work than it removes. What
> exactly is the major advantage?

I tend to consider my packages as minor forks of upstream; a fork that
never ventures very far and gets synchronised (both ways) often. So I
tend to just use the same as I would for "real development" (maybe an
instance of "when all you have is a hammers, everything looks like a
nail"?).

In some sense, dpatch is already a simple VC system.

There are also two components in a VC system:

 - Version Control itself

 - Distribution, flow of code and changes

How would the distribution component work with "just dpatch"? Let's
suppose you "just use dpatch". I do a change on a common package. How
do you get the change? You also do a change. How do we handle merging
them? I package a new library, but the package is still in a very
experimental stage. How do you get it to take a look at my packaging?

That's what a "full-blown" VC system helps us manage.

> For other packages, we don't have a naming convention yet. From
> what I see, we have the following options:

> 1) scheme48-<package>, scsh-<package> (OCaml, Python, Common Lisp)
> 2) lib<package>-s48, lib<package>-scsh (Perl, Ruby, OCaml for C
>    library bindings)
> 3) <package>-s48 and <package>-scsh (Emacs)

> I'd go for No. 1, any opinions?

For applications written in s48, I'd definitely use the upstream
name, without special "is written in that language" string in the
name. For libraries, number 2. The "lib" part is important :-)
Examples below.

If the upstream name is too generic (such as install-lib), I'd add
s48- or -s48, yes. I have started my install-lib packages with
"scsh-install-lib".

For scsh, add the major/minor version to
it. E.g. sunterlib-scsh-0.6. scsh 0.7 will be incompatible with scsh
0.6 (and 0.8 incompatible with 0.7), thus I'm planning for parallel
installs all the way there.

> install-lib
>     Scsh only. It's a prerequisite for most of the ones below. I
>     think you were working on that one, how is it going?

It is OK, actually, but I have to package something using the
install-lib and install something using the install-lib "manually" to
test my packaging of the install-lib. That's where I stand now.

Proposed name: scsh-install-lib

Why? Not really a library in the conventional sense, so no lib
prefix. install-lib is too generic a name, so stick a "scsh-" before
it.

> sunterlib
>     Useful for both scheme48 and scsh. The latter should be
>     trivial, as it supports the scsh install-lib. The former is
>     also quite trivial.

Proposed names: libsunterlib-s48, libsunterlib-scsh-0.6 .

> sunet
>     Only useful for scsh, but also trivial, as install-lib is
>     supported again.

 libsunet-scsh-0.6

> tinyclos

 tinyclos-s48, tinyclos-scsh-0.6

> htmlprag
>     Prepackaged for both scheme48 and scsh at
>     http://home.tiscali.de/emilio.lopes/scheme/
> ssax
>     Oleg's permissive XML parser, at http://ssax.sourceforge.net/.
>     Packages available for s48, shouldn't be too difficult to port
>     to scsh.

libhtmlprag-{s48,scsh-0.6}, libssax-{s48,scsh-0.6}.

-- 
Lionel