Re: Upgrading ConTeXt and testing

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

Taco Hoekwater wrote:

>
> Hi Idris (and all),
>
> Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
>
>> When a new ConTeXt is released, Taco or someone else could then 
>> document which bugs are fixed, features added, and, most importantly, 
>> what features are changed or broken. 
>
>
> Whenever someone reports a problem, the release notes on the wiki
> enable me to quickly look up changes in the code (to check for
> possible regression errors). It has saved me a lot of time in the
> last half year or so.
>
> But the release notes is not enough, we are aware of that. Three
> other projects in the pipeline are:
>
> * A read-only CVS containing as many of the old ConTeXt releases as
>   we can find, for reference and regression checks.

subversion -)

i'll set that up as soon as possible and taco can mirror that 
(interesting experiment anyway, mirroring a svn archive)

we can  use fabrices gforce archive if needed

>   This cannot be started immediately because we first have to collect
>   all of the old zips, so they can be imported in the correct order.
>   (assigned to Patrick and me)

-)

> * A limited-access CVS with Hans' current working sources, so that
>   some of the active developers can apply patches themselves
>   (assigned to Hans)

indeed; i'll open a svn repository for that with access for approved dev's

> * A test suite, precisely as you proposed (not assigned to anybody
>   yet <wink>)
>   The best way to boot this project is to request/create a project
>   on Fabrice Popineau's gforge/subversion server:
>     https://foundry.supelec.fr/

indeed

>   (we intend to use the same gforge server for the read-only CVS)
>
right

>> A related point (disussed before) is that ConTeXt needs to become 
>> completely independent of the TeX distributions. mswincontext.zip is 
>> a good start (I no longer use fpTeX), but things like dvipdfmx and 
>> the plain format (for testing purposes) need to be thoroughly 
>> supported and tested. 
>
>
> Yeah, I very much agree. Here is the run-down on last night's
> problem:
>
> Hans does not ship lang-us.pat, probably because someone told him
> not to (that sort of stuff is a whole different story). What
> happens then is that context's file synonym mechanism tries to
> find a replacement file for lang-us.pat.
>
> I do not have ushyphmax.tex installed, so on my system, that means
> ushyph.tex, and it works fine. But apparently (sometimes? dependant
> on install options perhaps?) miktex ships a ushyphmax.tex. And a
> broken one, at that. It took most of yesterday-evening to discover
> that. :-(

sigh, what a mess; so, we set up a repository for that as well:

context -> sources (copy from one of our internal servers)
                 history
                 generic patterns
                 distribution
                 manuals (copy from one of our internal servers)

>> Again, a support team for Hans is needed (especially for Mac OSX and 
>> Unix), and I'm willing to help as far as my skills will allow.
>
>
> Lately, we get a lot of bug reports for miktex, which is problematic
> since none of us use miktex: I believe Hans has a fptex-ish system,
> and most other 'core' people are either linux or macintosh based.

> A volunteer for miktex would be brilliant (even better: someone who
> knows how to compile miktex executables).

yeah, i have to pick up that thread, since newtexexec needs to be miktex aware; 

Hans 

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