Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom silver branch

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Ralf Hemmecke <address@hidden> writes:

| On 04/09/2006 05:34 AM, Bill Page wrote:
| > On April 8, 2006 5:47 PM Frederic Lehobey wrote:
| >> ... On Sat, Apr 08, 2006 at 05:25:08PM -0400, Bill Page wrote:
| >>> Storing binary files in a source code archive is something that
| >>> I have always objected to, but Tim insists on re-distributing
| >>> code this way. I really think we should stop doing this.
| >> Please, provide the relevant patches. This is exactly what needs
| >> the silver branch and what it is intended for.  :-)
| >>
| > Indeed. But these two patches will introduce two new dependencies:
| > both gcl and noweb would have to be installed *before* building
| > Axiom. Personally, I don't think that this is a problem. Tim Daly
| > resists. Are there any other opinions?
| 
| We actually have (at least) two types of people.
| 1) Axiom users
| 2) Axiom developers
| 
| I guess, Axiom users are usually happy if they can download a binary
| package for their machine that works without a problem.

Indeed.  For such users, we should not require checkout from SVN
tree.  We should be able to provide binaries or pristine sources they
can build from.  When back to work place, I will propose a plan that
consists in building weekly snapshots for non-core developers users.

| Unfortunately, we don't have a person who is willing to maintain such
| a collection of binaries. Somebody interested in that?
| 
| So some Axiom users have to become "Axiom builder", i.e. they have to
| download the sources and type "./configure; make; make install".

100% agreed.

[...]

| Well, but not all people use DEBIAN. How would other people be easy
| with not having gcl and noweb in their Axiom distribution?

I'm not proposing this seriously, but thought it worths mentioning:
in the Perl community, the updated can compute the dependencies, and
automatically download the missing bits (if permitted).  Food for
thought. 

[...]

| Ah, yes, wasn't there someone who wanted to write some
| autoconf/automake stuff for Axiom?

yup, me :-/
I can't do all things at the same time; we have to work gradually.

-- Gaby