RE: [Axiom-developer] [build-improvements] Update torecentGCL-2.6.8pre CVS

[Bill Page]

On October 29, 2006 9:19 PM Tim Daly wrote:
> 
> I believe you're not ready to hear my answer. Lets try
> experience...
> 
> Implement your suggestion in your own branch and we can 
> experiment with it.

There's not much to do, just remove the 'tar xf' and check-in
the sources.

> If the experiment hints that it is a success then we'll merge 
> it into silver.
> 
> Clearly this will raise a lot of issues, such as how you
> plan to track changes in GCL, 

What issues? I don't plan to change GCL. If necessary we can
submit patches to Camm.

> how you plan to handle partial versions where Camm has 
> applied an axiom fix but not updated the version number, 
> how you plan to allow for downgrading versions (ala the 
> fedora5 issue),

Wait for a release of GCL that works.
 
> how axiom "hot fixes" will be handled before and after GCL 
> upstream changes
> etc...
>

Don't "hot fix" in the Axiom Gold release.
 
> All of these have current answers. 
> 
> You can follow the same scheme you use to handle distribution
> of the Zope/Plone stuff to Doyen. I'm not sure how you do it.

??? Zope/Plone stuff is in a darcs archive. Actually the only
thing in the archive is a modified version of ZWiki and a
modified version of LatexWiki.

> 
> Does Alfredo apt-get Zope/Plone with your upstream changes?

No. There are no upstream changes to Zope. Plone is not used
with Doyen but there are also no upstream changes to Plone.

> Does Alfredo get a vanilla Zope/Plone CVS and then apply your 
> changes?

Yes, Alfredo uses vanilla Zope which must be installed according
to the standard procedures for that linux distribution. For
example on the axiom.risc server which is running Debian, we
just need apt-get install zope.
 
> Do you maintain a Zope/Plone tarball and apply your changes? 

No.

> Do you maintain your own Zope/Plone CVS with your local changes? 

Yes, well actually only ZWiki and LatexWiki are in the MathAction
darcs repository. These are Zope application packages, aka.
"products" that can be installed under Zope.

> How do you get your changes pushed upstream? 

On rare occasions I have submitted patches to Simon, the ZWiki
developer. But recently Simon has pulled the complete modified
versions of ZWiki and LatexWiki from the MathAction repository
and merged them with the main ZWiki upstream. I count this as
*success*. I don't have to maintain this stuff any more.

> What if they aren't accepted?

No big deal. Mostly I am concerned about the other direction.
There many improvements to ZWiki that we are not in the version
we are using now because of the difficulty of merging upstream
changes with local changes. But since Simon has done us the
courtesy of merging up, then the only thing I need to do (real
soon now) is to move the Axiom Wiki and Axiom Portal over to
Simon's new version.

Well, actually there are already some changes since Simon did
the merge (e.g. Sage support), so I will have to submit these
as patchs to Simon.

> Suppose Doyen uses Fedora6 and Zope/Plone doesn't work. What 
> happens now?
>

The Zope/Plone developers would surely be well motivated to make
it work since Fedora is a major linux distribution. If necessary
we can help them make it work.
 
> Since you distribute the wiki then whatever your scheme is you
> can try to set up axiom in the same way and we can experiment
> with it.
> 

It is not my plan to distribute the wiki software. I am glad that
the developer of ZWiki has opted to include the LatexWiki with
MathAction (Axiom interface) extensions as part ZWiki.

Regards.
Bill Page.