Re: [Caml-list] Re: [OSR] Ports-like package management system

[Berke Durak <berke.durak@exalead.com>]

Sylvain Le Gall a écrit :
> On 30-01-2008, Berke Durak <berke.durak@exalead.com> wrote:
>> When you develop a program P you will have use programs P_{i1}, P_{i2}, 
>> ... and thus have checkouts of repositories S_{i1}, S_{i2}, and so on. 
>> If you find a bug in P_{i1} you can directly edit the checked out 
>> version, recompile everything automatically by launching ocaml in P's 
>> directory and thus debug P_{i1}.  You can then locally commit your 
>> changes to P_{i1} and then easily push the patch or send the diff to the 
>> upstream author.
>>
> 
> Send a patch to author of P_{i1}. This is the easiest way. 
> 
> <hint>
> diff -Nurd  P_{i1} P_{i1}.new
> </hint>

So you need to get a separate copy of P_{i1}, unpack it, and run a diff 
by hand...  And what will happen during the process of developing the 
patch?  You will be working on your patch without version control 
system.  Which is very uncomfortable, especially as you will be working 
on unfamiliar code - you will make mistakes, erase or modify important 
stuff, won't be able to easily rollback, branch or review your changes.
You will have to play around with tar, diff, patch and merge by hand, 
make mistakes and create a mess.  Any VCS can handle all these tasks easily.

Unless your correction is very minor, you will have to either (a) import 
the project into your own favorite VCS, losing history and create a 
short-lived repository or be forced to track all future changes by hand; 
or (b) checkout the sources using the VCS the authors use - but then 
we're back at case one: you will have to potentially have all the 
version control systems used by all the software components you may want 
to contribute to, and also learn how to use them all.

>>    - A build system integrated with the package management system,
>>
> 
> Yes, if you do not force every software developers to use it and still
> provide a way to integrate their software into your package management
> system.

We are not forcing anyone to work using the selected VCS.  We are just 
asking them to regularly publish their software to the VCS.  If they 
directly work using the selected VCS, publishing commits will be easier 
for them - but they can still work on a day-to-day basis using their own 
VCS.

-- 
Berke DURAK