[ANN] Guile Hall 0.3.0 released

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

I have the pleasure to announce that I have today released Guile Hall
0.3.0.

You can get a tarball (that requires autoreconf) at
https://gitlab.com/a-sassmannshausen/guile-hall/-/releases.

You can also install it with the latest Guix (from a3dfe05285):
$ guix install guile-hall

You can check the source code, and report issues at
https://gitlab.com/a-sassmannshausen/guile-hall/.

I would like to thank the following people, who have all contributed
issues, thougts or code.

    Stephen Scheck <address@hidden>
    Jose A. Ortega Ruiz <address@hidden>
    Jack Hill <address@hidden>
    Adriano Peluso <address@hidden>

Release notes below, under * Changes in 0.3 (since 0.2.1).

* From the README file

Hall aims to provide a black box that "just works" (tm), so that you
can create, develop, build & distribute Guile projects.

With Hall you will be able to:
- Manage a Guile project hierarchy from one project spec file.
- Transparently support the GNU build system for maximum portability.
- Leverage tight coupling to Guix for reliability & confidence.
- Profit.

This README is all written documentation that currently exists.  The
project must be considered Alpha software at this stage.

Nonetheless, all commands and arguments are documented, and passing
the -h flag to any command or sub-command should provide you with some
guidance.  In addition all procedures in the codebase are documented
with docstrings.

* Changes in 0.3 (since 0.2.1)

** Allow adding single files to hall.scm using `hall scan'

   `hall scan' now accepts two optional arguments so that you can quickly add
   individual files to your hall.scm file, even if your project state is
   dirty.  This is an alternative to running the full auto-magic `hall scan'
   command.

** Emit user friendly error messages for common failures

   Hitherto we simply used `throw' to error out of unexpected situations.
   This would happen even in the case of user error or predictable situations.

   I consider the codebase solid enough to emit more user-friendly error
   messages in predictable situations.

** Allow use of fully-fledged regexp to --skip files

   The `scan' and `clean' subcommands accept a --skip keyword to exclude
   specific (classes of) files from their operation.  So far they had to be
   precise files.  The --skip keyword now expects Guile style regex pattern
   strings for increased flexibility.

** Add a notes system for giving advice to the user

   Hall aims to understand your project and the files it contains, even if it
   does not fully support your use case.  To this end, its architecture
   creates a representation of your project in the hall.scm file.

   Hall now has a facility for emitting useful commentary when creating or
   manipulating this representation.

   A current case in point at present is that we understand that Guile
   projects may include C files — but Hall does not support them in its build
   infrastructure.  So we want to allow & support users who include C files,
   but we want to warn them about Hall's short-comings in this area.

** Change the filetype architecture

   So far, filetype registration code was spread out over the codebase.  From
   this version we support a simple <filetype> interface.  Supported filetypes
   are declared in /hall/spec.scm.

   Supporting more filetypes is as easy as adding a simple declaration there.

   This sets up a further development allowing individual projects to specify
   filetypes above and beyond Hall's built-in filetypes.

** Support XML, C, .log, .trs, .tex, & emacs autosave/backup files

   A simple development thanks to the above.

** Add a default .gitignore file

   Hall has strong opinions about development, primarily to stop new
   developers from having to make bewildering choices.  Currently it pushes
   strong git & guix integration, as well as a specific documentation and
   folder structure.  As such we now add a standard .gitignore file that
   should cover the vast majority of use cases.