Re: [off-list] CVS pains

[Thien-Thi Nguyen]

() address@hidden (Karl Berry)
() Fri, 14 Dec 2012 23:31:05 GMT

       would be a good first step.

   Almost nothing happens on the savannah side.  The basic process is a
   hook into cvs commit that does (effectively) wget
   something.gnu.org/something.cgi where the CGI is maintained by the
   FSF, and does all the real work.

   Getting visibility into the active code for anything that the
   sysadmins maintain is never easy, and we're not going to solve that
   here.  Hoping for a nice make dist tarball of a lovely little
   installable package is not realistic.  Everything about this whole
   process is ad hoc.

   There are no test environments for any of this stuff, either.
   That's life.

Right.  I expected as much.  I guess the thrust of my message was to
urge everyone (sysadmins and non-sysadmin GNU hackers) to act more in
alignment w/ free software ideals than w/ proprietary software practice.
I still believe this is the right approach to improvement, no matter the
initial state.

       switch backend from CVS to Git

   Whatever happens, "switching" the backend would be a monumental
   mistake.  What's desirable is to support git (or other things -- not
   everyone likes git, really) *as well as* cvs.

Sorry, i was imprecise.  Part of a (good) refactoring is to make the
system more table driven, moving choice of backend and backend-specific
handling under the abstractions, such that CVS or Git or j.r.VCS can
work (similar in spirit to Emacs VC).

   Meanwhile, it's pretty pointless to have this discussion (for the
   umpteenth time) when none of us are the people who are going to do
   the work.  As I explained in my previous mail.

I missed the previous discussions; sorry for the noise.  

   If anyone wants access to savannah to look around on their own, try
   to understand and help with the systems there (and has time available
   to do such), just let me know.  There is no barrier there.

How about someone who wants access solely for the purpose of composing a
tarball (CGI plus CVS-commit hook) for off-line hacking?  That is, no
"help w/ the systems", unless you count off-line hacking for future
(re-)deployment as help.

If the answer is yes, i volunteer.  Otherwise, OK, no worries; hopefully
someone will step up.  I'll drop out of this thread, in any case.

-- 
Thien-Thi Nguyen ..................................... GPG key: 4C807502
.                  NB: ttn at glug dot org is not me                   .
.                 (and has not been since 2007 or so)                  .
.                        ACCEPT NO SUBSTITUTES                         .
........... please send technical questions to mailing lists ...........

pgpabNaFOPL3V.pgp
Description: PGP signature