RE: [Axiom-developer] Re: axiom--main--1--patch-31

[Bill Page]

On Friday, March 18, 2005 12:28 PM Mark Murray wrote:
> 
> root writes:
> > Merging whole branches is generally done by hand.
> > But that's mostly my distrust of source code manipulatioin
> > tools. My general method is to do:
> > 
> >   diff -r --brief oldbranch newbranch
> > 
> > and then do individual file diffs with hand merges.
> > Source code is too important to let the tools change
> > it.

This is one point that I cannot agree with Tim about.
I think in order for Axiom to advance it must begin to
depend on the use of more sophisticated and higher level
source code tools - after all we now longer write much
in assembler language... It's time we begin to put more
trust in the tools (the right tools, that is). Oh ya,
I guess it was Tim who has suggested that all of Axiom
should actullay be written in lisp "machine language" ;)

> 
> OK, given the ammount of stuff I needed to do, that was
> just not feasible. I found out how to do it, and
> axiom--BSD--1 is now near-identical to axiom--main--1.

Mark, I'm very glad to hear about someone using the more
advanced features of arch (star-merge, I presume?). If you
have a moment to spare, I think it would be great if you
could write up a little "I did it this way" recipe for others
to follow. I find most of the arch documentation too obscure
and unapplied to be easily digested. For my taste arch has
too many ways of doing things and a lot of them not obvious
nor intuitively named. But once you see how someone has made
it work in a real situation it seems much more clear.

Regards,
Bill Page.