[Gnu-arch-users] Linux.conf.au FIXIT session - working with GNU Arch.

[Robert Collins]

We just ran a great session with folk here at the Linux.conf.au (LCA)
2004 conference on arch. We discussed arch, how folk are finding it to
use; identified some best practive idioms that make it easy to use for a
number of scenarios, and filed a debian bug to integrate it into
mailcap.

Some specific things identified to improve tla's usability included
manual/howto improvements:
  implications of working disconnected
  a howto describing various idioms for operation of tla
  we wrote an addendum to the CSCVS documentation for tracking a CVS
tree from a point-in-time, and getting it's changes easily.
  we drafted the core of a howto covering the various ways one can get a
plain text version of the changes in a changeset and email that to folk
that may not have tla.
  why ugly file names exist in the arch trees.
  that the tutorial appears to skip some useful detail on tla inventory.
  the implication of renaming files - and why you use tla mv / just mv
for taglined files.
  a bug in the manual - it suggests using human sensible uuid's, which
leads to bad temptations.

We discussed a couple of enhancements that might make some folks life a
little easier - we could add in-file tags to files at tla commit time
(or a similar command) by calling out to an interactive version of the
existing script that can add tags to many many different file types.

We definately achieved the planned outcome of increasing the skill of
the attendees with tla, and identifying where tla could improve (without
sacrificing design) to let users use/learn it more easily.  I will be
following through on the identified points in the next week or two, and
this should make tla significantly easier to learn.

We had a huge amount of great input, the top four key folk where

 Mark Suter - filed a debian bug, and assisted with clarifying where tla
was unclear in documentation.
 Gavin Baker - asked many great questions. Coming from CVS, his
questions helped guide the areas that need addressing.
 Brian May - an apparently fluent tla user, he caught me out on a few
gotchas :).
 Dave (Last name unknown, but I recall he's a PhD student at University
in sydney, who knows Conrad Parker.) - Nominated for much the same
reason as Gavin Baker

GNU Arch - a.k.a. tla enables rapid concurrent development amongst
widely spread out developers including those without always on internet
access. By allowing truely distributed repositories its possible to
merge and commit while offline on a laptop, and push those changes to
the wider world at a later date. TLA has the potential to revolutionise
software development in the OSS world through the increased freedom it
offers. Lastly it's support for gpg signatures allows changes to be
verified against known sources, helping reduce some of the trust issues
such faced in cleaning up after a breaking by the savannah hosted
projects. (or for any untrusted storage or transmission medium).

GNU Arch has many resources... some key ones are:

        Home page: http://regexps.srparish.net/www/
        GNU Arch project page:
http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/arch.html
        Mailing lists: http://savannah.gnu.org/mail/?group=gnu-arch
        Tutorial: http://regexps.srparish.net/tutorial-tla/arch.html

        List of repositories, mirror of many repositories, and a wiki:
http://arch.sourcecontrol.net/

I think some great progress was made today...

Rob

-- 
GPG key available at: <http://www.robertcollins.net/keys.txt>.

signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part