Re: maintaining advanced power-user Scheme functions

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

2013/8/14 Thomas Morley <address@hidden>:
> 2013/8/14 Janek Warchoł <address@hidden>:
>> Harm and David N. (and some other people) write lots of very advanced
>> (and very helpful!) Scheme functions.  These funcitons are improved
>> over time, and there is a problem related to that: it's easy to get
>> lost in all the email threads about them, and it's not always obvious
>> where the most recent version is.
>>
>> I think that such functions should be tracked by version control, and
>> i see two approaches:
>> - include them in official LilyPond source as soon as they are
>> created.  Upside: there's bigger chance that they will be updated when
>> there are some changes. Downside: one has to write documentation and
>> go through official patch submitting channels.
>> - use another repository.  What about OpenLilyLib? 
>> http://www.openlilylib.org/
>
> Hi Janek,
>
> well, if I think one of my functions, definitions etc is worth a
> patch, I do so, but ofcourse there's the risk I'm distracted by other
> tasks and forget about it or I've no time or ...

sure, i understand.
Actually, you said something very important: preparing an "official"
patch is a non-trivial task - it requires thinking and focusing.  We
probably cannot make our patch-accepting policy simpler, so this means
that we need to have a simpler means of handling such work.  The
situation "i have something useful, but i dont' have enough
time/energy to get it submitted" should never happen.  Submitting
useful stuff should be a no-brainer.

> The idea of version-control for such functions might be nice. But
> because I'm still not very familiar with git I'm feeling kind of
> ambivalent.

I'd be happy to help you (and anyone else) with git.
And as i'm a huge fan of git, i believe that it can solve many
problems - probably also this one.

> Otoh, it might be an idea to do so for the LSR.
>
> Though, a lot of my functions, definitions etc are too special-cased,
> written to fit some users needs or they are workarounds not worth a
> patch.

They may not be worth a patch for the official LilyPond code
base/documentation, but they are definitely worth being remembered.
All of them.  This means that we need some place to store such things
- something like LSR.

> The right place for them would be the LSR, _if_ the LSR would be able
> to compile them and not use a LilyPond-version far too old for many of
> my ideas.
>
> There were some insinuations on the list the last months (or was it a
> year already?) to upgrade the LSR and yes, one should do so.
> But I hesitate to volunteer again for this task.
> I initiated the last ugrade and did perhaps the major work, supported
> by several developers and the great David Nalesnik.
> Though there was only one, I repeat _one_, other user who tried to help:
> Philippe Hezaine
>
> @Philippe
> Thanks a lot for trying to help. And let me say: You didn't waste my time!
>
> So I was annoyed by the lack of help/interest of others and I'm still
> pissed off.

I understand this.
I think that this means that there is some design flaw about how LSR
works.  I'll think about it more.

Janek