RE: [Axiom-developer] patches

[Page, Bill]

Ralf, 

On Tuesday, March 28, 2006 8:29 AM you wrote:
> ... 
> I also volunteer to write the documentation on the wiki 
> related to this tla stuff. Once one understands the basic
> things, it becomes easy. But I wanted to commit to a local
> archive (without internet access) and then merge with the
> one at axiom-developer.org. That was a bit trickier to 
> find out. But I think I have an acceptable way (simply
> create a local personal archive).
> 

I think you are right. Simple documentation on your
procedure would be great!

> ...
> 
> So there is one suggestion from my side. The version
> axiom--main--1 should be made read-only. That is declared
> to be THE stable branch and only Tim (or any person that
> he trusts) has write access to it.

That is already how the Axiom tla archive works. HTTP access
is read-only. SFTP access allows commits but requires that
you register public keys with Tim Daly before the system
will allow you access to the archive.

> 
> For anything else, people should branch from that one,
> create there own private (or public on axiom-developer.org)
> archive, produce new code, tell Tim, so that Tim could
> decide whether the changes should go into axiom--main--1.

There are of course a few necessary details to setup in order
to permit others to access your work. I think the web site
has a nice brief description of how to use tla:

http://rhythmbox.sourceforge.net/development.html

and how to setup a mirror to distribute your changes to others.
Just change 'http://web.rhythmbox.org/arch/2004' to
'http://axiom-developer.org/archive/axiom' and I think that
is probably pretty close to how we will want to use tla for
Axiom. I am sure there are probably other short and simple
descriptions on the web of how to use 'tla' for distributed
open source development.

'tla' has lots of different options and ways of doing things -
That is what has always scared me away from using it full-time.
In contrast 'darcs' is much simpler and (usually) has only
one way to do things. But if we can document just the right
combination of basic commands (such as described at the
website above) and if we have someone who is very familiar
with the process to act as a tutor, then I think 'tla' should
be no problem.

I think it is also possible to use tla (or darcs) in
combination with the Axiom Wiki IssueTracker. Instead of
uploading the patch file to the Wiki and attaching it to
the Issue page, one could just add a link to the archive
were the patch is stored which will retrieve the related
patch in diff -au format.

> 
> People (like me) feel more confident if they know that
> they don't destroy the work of others if they start
> hacking on a new idea.
> 
> You hear/read more of that probably soon.
>

Thanks. I am very glad that you offered to do this. :)

Regards,
Bill Page.