On Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:27:38 -0500
Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <jord...@octave.org> wrote:
> Actually, I don't see what ditching hg has anything to do with the
> real meat of the actual problem, fixing the build system.
+1000
I don't recall the design of the new "development model", "directory
structure" or "build system" being discussed anywhere public. From
references on the mailing lists, I understand that there were
discussions during various Sage days. But shouldn't there be a thread
on sage-devel where people can give feedback before we go through with
these changes?
Keshav, Jordi and many others have pointed these out before, but
our main problem seems to be:
- we are not really using a DVCS
- the build system is showing its limits due to the rapid growth of
Sage
I don't think "switching to GIT" will solve either of these problems
directly. Why don't we discuss the solutions to these problems
separately and put them into action?
- Development model:
I like the idea of keeping a branch for each issue on Trac. I have
even suggested using mercurial's pbrach extension for this
purpose privately to William about 2 years ago.
With a student, I even set up a patched roundup install with this
feature. I can enable it on the lmonade issue tracker if anybody is
interested in testing this out. Though I believe using gitlab and
not reinventing the wheel is far better.
- Build system
This actually has two items:
- integrating the repositories
Why?
AFAICT, the only reason is to allow us to specify the dependencies
of the Sage library better. ATM, when a patch goes into Sage, the
corresponding patch to update the spkg is in a separate
repository. Putting these together would help coordinate the two.
Do we really need to coordinate these? Why is Sage any different
from any other large software package out there?
The standard solution to this problem is to add a "configure"
script to the library which checks if the dependencies are
satisfied and sets various options for the compilation process
accordingly.
The initial design of Sage separated the mathematics library from
the distribution system, then further separated the user interface
(notebook) from the mathematics library. Why are we now trying to
reconcile a bunch of shell scripts with a Python/Cython library
for mathematics?
- rewriting the build system
I agree that things can be done much better, but I don't
understand why there is talk of rewriting. There are plenty of
excellent package managers around. Why not just use one of
them?
Cheers,
Burcin
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"sage-devel" group.
To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel?hl=en.
