Re: [Axiom-developer] noweb and SVN

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

Waldek Hebisch <address@hidden> writes:

| Looking at build problem (reported in private mail) I noticed
| something which looks as serious incompatibility between svn
| and noweb.  Namely, AFAICS files retrived by svn get timestamp
| corresponding to time of retrival.  So, genereted files which
| are up to date in repository may look out of date after checkout.

This is a problem accute only because SVN does not have the
equivalent of "cvs ci -f", at least I have been unable to find it.
We may version the modification time of the generated files, but that
is not a solution I like.

| Typically this is not a problem because if checkout is fast
| enough file and its dependencies get the same timestamp.
| But sometimes we may loose race and files are needlessly
| re-made, which again typically is not a big problem.  But
| to re-make noweb we need noweb, so for noweb this is fatal.

Yes, if and when we need to regenerate noweb source files, it is a bug.

| 
| We have the same problem with few critical build files,
| notably with Makefile.in.
| 
| I think the the most natural solution for this problem is to require
| already installed external noweb.

That is a reasonable requiremnt for developers.  I'm not sure it
exports to most end users without getting the entry bar too high.
This is an issue I'm ambivalent about and don't have a clear cut
answer for.  

Let see, what the requirements would be:

  (1) need an installed lisp -- I still believe me must have GCL
      around as long as we cannot build Axiom with other systems.
  (2) need an installed noweb -- noweb is not as widely packaged
      as Lisp systems.
  (3) needs socket support -- I believe this is a bogus requirement
      at least for the time being.
  (4) needs installed latex

-- Gaby