RE: [Axiom-developer] CVS, Arch, Darcs

[Weiss, Juergen]

Hello,

I would strongly support Camm's views on a more modular
approach. With extremely limited development resources,
if it takes month to port a little C application (sman)
to Linux (which should require maybe two days of work),
we should clearly focus on making things simple. This 
is not to criticize Tim for not being able to spend more
time on this -- I myself have not found almost any time for
Axiom during the last months.

I would argue in favor of using out of the box tools (gcl,
notangle etc.). Development on one Linux platform only 
-- others can send patches for other Linux platforms and
other operating systems (BSD, OS X, Windows) and test
these. 

I'm not an expert on CVS, Arch, Darcs. But my impression
is, that we spent more time on changing the systems used
than on using CVS on nongnu.org in an efficient way.

With best regards

Juergen Weiss

Juergen Weiss     | Universitaet Mainz, Zentrum fuer Datenverarbeitung,
address@hidden| 55099 Mainz, Tel: +49(6131)39-26361, FAX:
+49(6131)39-26407
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
>  On Behalf Of Camm Maguire
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 4:20 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Cc: address@hidden; address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Axiom-developer] CVS, Arch, Darcs
> 
> Greetings!  Just thought I'd add my feeble $.02 to Tim's breathtaking
> vision. 
> 
> The goals are obviously quite impressive. In my work with GCL
> supporting maxima, acl2, and axiom for Debian, though, I've already
> run into obstacles associated with Lisp's extreme level of
> integration.  A similar philosophy has killed Windows in comparison to
> 'keep-it-simple' modular Linux/unix design, IMHO.  For example, at
> present, without some as-yet-to-be-implemented distributed patching
> mechanism, a bug fix in GCL requires a rebuild of GCL + all three
> programs on 12 architectures.  It appears that there is a definite
> tradeoff between the advantages of integration to developers/users,
> and a modular independent black box leggo-like construction for ease
> of maintenance and bug fixing.  I still have more experience in C than
> lisp, and would be pulling out all my hair even thinking about
> implementing some of the spaghetti I've seen from scratch, at least in
> C.  Simplicity and modularity let me leverage my feeble time resources
> much better, in my experience.
> 
> Just a thought.
> 
> Take care,
> -- 
> Camm Maguire                                          
> address@hidden
> ==============================================================
> ============
> "The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  -- 
>  Baha'u'llah
> 
> 
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