Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Problems with initial load of new Git repo

[David Hill]

Dear Assaf,

Thanks for the detailed response.

The "builds" situation is clear. However, my comment is that if you are trying 
to promote the use of "free" software, I would have thought it would be useful 
to make it readily available to those who may not want to get involved in the 
mechanisms of compilation. Even compiling good source on the Mac is daunting 
for the non-computer scientists/developer. One target of our software is 
linguists who simply want to run the software, and may only then may be seduced 
into arranging development by someone else when they find that they'd like some 
little (or perhaps major) change, and they are not able to do the work 
themselves. That surely spreads the gospel?

However, I understand that the repos are intended for reasonably 
computer-development-literate people and that GNU projects can provide builds 
in tarballs as is done for Emacs and that these should be compilable source.

In that connection, I presume the documentation should have the original .tex 
files along with images. Does that mean that ,pdf files derived from these 
should not be provided?

I checked into the material on the releases site (specifically 
http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/gnuspeech/). That comprised dumps in 
connection with the conversion from CS to SVN done by my colleague Dalmazio 
Brisinda. It was necessary to provide such a dump of the CVS material for 
Sylvain Beuclar to put in a new SVN repo. Sylvain is no longer doing that work 
for the hackers, having given a lot before moving on.

There is no reason to keep those, AFAIK, since the SVN site is available. 
However, I gather I could put bz2 files with builds there, though that such a 
course would be less usual, but it would make them available on the project's 
savannah admin page (presumably http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gnuspeech/) 
assuming I enabled that feature (is that the same as the "Download Area" on 
that page in the "Quick View" section?).

The two references "Homebrew" and "GNU Lilypond" are interesting. Thank you.

I expect to have the clean load for the Git repository ready within a few days 
and will write to the GNU hackers' mailing list when I feel sure it is ready. 
You may decide to respond to some of the points I raise in this email before 
then.

Thanks again for your helpful input.

Warm regards.

david

------

On Sep 12, 2015, at 19:44 00PM, Assaf Gordon wrote:

> Hello,
> 
>> On Sep 11, 2015, at 15:40, David Hill <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> [...]
>> You mention "binary entries". Are "builds" not acceptable if they are not 
>> done under GNU/Linux?
> 
> It is not that compiled binaries are "not acceptable", it is more that a git 
> repository (at least on savannah, but also universally, IMHO) is not the 
> place to store compiled binaries.
> Git excels at storing textual files, and is meant as a version control 
> mechanism primarily for textual source code files.
> This is not to say some repositories don't keep small binary files in it 
> (e.g. PNG/JPG files), but almost all repositories do not contain compiled 
> binaries (such that users will just download and use).
> 
> Users who will use your git repository commonly expect to be able to compile 
> the code by themselves (in a fashion, it is meant for advanced users).
> 
> GNU Savannah has two other mechanisms to provide downloadable files (for 
> users who don't want to deal with git):
> 
> First,
> The 'tarball' official releases, GPG-signed by you and uploaded to the gnu 
> server at http://ftp.gnu.org contained a 'distribution ready' tarball that 
> users can expect to be able to build with a simple 'configure && make && sudo 
> make install'.
> On the same server, some projects (e.g. emacs) also provide compiled binaries 
> for some OSes which perhaps one can expect it will be complicated to build 
> you project.
> 
> Emacs source-code tarballs are here: 
>  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/
> And pre-compiled binaries for windows are here:
>  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/
> 
> Second,
> a less used option (at least for official GNU projects) is the 'downloads' 
> feature (which you can enable on the project's savannah admin page).
> 
> I noticed there are already some files stored the downloads area:
>  http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/gnuspeech/
> And you can upload more files there with rsync:
>  rsync -avhP LOCALFILE address@hidden:/releases/gnuspeech/
> 
> These two places would be much much better place to store compiled binaries 
> than in a git repository.
> 
> As a side note, if you are trying to build gnuspeech for Mac OS, here are two 
> pointers:
> 1. HomeBrew ( http://brew.sh/ ) - is a very popular package manager for Mac 
> OS. They already have mechanisms to download tarballs and compile them on Mac 
> OS X (example, their recipe for GNU coreutils: 
> https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/coreutils.rb 
> ).
> 
> 2. The GNU Lilypond has extensive experience with building a complicated 
> program and packaging it to Mac OS X. See here: http://lilypond.org/gub/ or 
> contact the Lilypond authors ( https://savannah.gnu.org/users/dak would 
> likely be able to help ).
> 
> [...]
> 
> Regarding git submodules:
>> Yes, I have been having some discussion on that, and it may be that fewer 
>> would suffice -- four to be precise.
> 
> We can wait with the exact details until you've experimented with the git 
> repository/submodules structures.
> I would ask you, though, please don't push any further changes to the current 
> GIT,
> so there will be no concerns about resetting it.
> 
> Simply write to the mailing list when you're ready to continue.
> 
> regards,
> - assaf
> 
>