Re: tla and keeping code

[Gianluca Guida]

Hello,

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:17:06 +0100, Alfred M. Szmidt <address@hidden> wrote:
> I'm thinking of doing a quite big change to the GNU System Creator,
> and wanted to know what people think about it before I start modifing
> things.
> 
[...]
> What I'm thinking of doing is to rewamp the whole
> "fetch-extract-patch" bit to use TLA archvies.  So instead of fetching
> any code using ftp/http/etc, extracting it and then patching it before
> building, we would just grab the TLA archive for the package.
> 

I actually like the idea, TLA is very powerful once you get used to it
(I still am not ;-).

> This is quite a big change since not many GNU projects use TLA to
> handle source code managment.  So one would have to mirror a bunch of
> GNU projects and non-GNU projects manually for some time.  With time
> this number would grow smaller since Savannah will hopefully support
> TLA in the future.
> 

You mean that every GNU project's mantainer will switch to tla or that
the GNU system mantainer/slaves will be adding GNU arch metadata to
sources?
I cannot really imagine a mass transition to TLA from CVS. Switching
revision control system is not an easy stuff and many long-time
running project are fine with CVS. Am I wrong? Or I misunderstood?
[defalt answer: misunderstood]

Anyway I volunteer on helping you to mirror some project and add TLA
metadata to it.

> In the end, the tree for the GNU system creator would look /usr/src on
> the BSDs, so we could just put it in /src and let all users have
> access to the source code, and a simple way to handle their own
> modifications if they wish to do so without having to go and figure
> out the awkward patching system the GSC has right now.
> 

I really don't know BSD's, but thinking about having TLA sources, this
would be quite nices, since TLA is very good when you want to have
personal trees, local hacks and stuff.

Happy Hacking,
Gianluca

-- 
It was a type of people I did not know, I found them very strange and
they did not inspire confidence at all. Later I learned that I had been
introduced to electronic engineers.
                                                           E. W. Dijkstra