[Gnu-arch-users] Re: FEATURE PLANS: pruning instead of configs

[Miles Bader]

Robert Collins <address@hidden> writes:
> 2) some projects like mozilla do the all-in-one approach which cvs and
> now subversion encourage. It's a freaking mess. I think that the use
> case of configs for library & build assembly is the primary use case,
> and a awesomely valuable one. So - targeting a cvs-like all-in-one tree
> approach is actually (IMO) a bad thing.

These new (proposed) feature look like nice generalizations that will be
handy for many things, only one of which is to hack on subsets of
giganto trees.

I will admit I do think that configs are simply too clumsy for many uses
though (I'm sure you've seen my complaining before :-), and the sort of
tree-slicing stuff Tom described has the huge advantage that it's
_dynamic_, so users can divide things up however is convenient for the
task at hand.

There are some problems for which configs probably are natural (e.g.,
netbsd pkgsrc), but the party line up to now of `divide big stuff up
into configs' has always seemed pretty forced -- some things just don't
fit.

-Miles
-- 
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra.  Suddenly it flips over,
pinning you underneath.  At night the ice weasels come.  --Nietzsche