Re: [9fans] Publish and be damned.

["Boyd Roberts" <boyd@planete.net>]

From: "Lucio De Re" <lucio@proxima.alt.za>
> I have an unfinished game (mastermind or bulls and cows) for Plan
> 9 I threw together to get a feeling for the graphics.  I am reluctant
> to post it as it stands because of the personal involvement, possible
> criticism, any number of embarrassments due to the unfinished nature
> of the program.

no, the 'owner' of the code gives you the url.  the url points at the
version that the 'owner' is prepared to release.  the url should point
at a 'portable' single file.  no 5k tarred (sic) zipped nonsense.

use bundle:

    http://www.planete.net/~boyd/code/bundle.html

and if it's large, and only then, then compress it.

you just maintain a chunk of pages with a chunk of urls.  you could
code it in a few hours with the shell of your choice.  look at:

    http://www.planete.net/~boyd/code/mkthumb

it doesn't do what you want, but its exhibits the principle.

this is a lot faster to write and use than some random piece of
junk on windows/unix/linux etc and is reasonably portable across
bourne shells that support shell functions.

see how it goes, and then, and only then go for a more
complex solution.  there's no point wasting time writing
3 zillion lines of C for something that turned out to
be a bad idea, when you could of worked it out with a
rapid prototype.

IIRC plan 9 was an experiment that came out of a research
lab and in response to the question what they for version
control, well was:

    /n/dump

on that topic i built a version of /n/dump using a program
(to call ftw(3) and stat(2)) and some scripts (to select and
copy the files) when i was at PRL.  as fast as i could free up
RA90's [1GB] i was headed to have the last ~30 days of all the
user's home directories on mag disc.  presented it as a WIP at a
USENIX -- hell, ken, with phil in tow, walked in.

on top of that ran the normal backups.  my version of /n/dump
was there for when someone blew away a file that they'd created
recently so they could go and get it themselves with cd, ls and cp.

if i had decided to write this thing in C it woulda taken months
and months more to debug; stuff that plays with time breaks when
it's time for it to break.

fixing a broken 'case' statement is a lot easier than wading
through hundreds or more lines of C.  speed was not an issue,
'cos it was basically i/o bound.  anyway, you can fix that
later.

been there, seen that, got the bowling shirt ...