On 10/5/06, Bill Page <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
When you say "integral part of the axiom src distribution" why do you assume that it must be via subversion, cvs, Arch, etc.?
I think that's the central issue here. A version control system has exactly one audience: developers. It's meant for tracking the history of source code. It doesn't need to contain large static unchanging objects, and it certainly doesn't need to contain other packages that the code depends on. It only needs to track the code itself, the volatile stuff that really needs fine-grained management. A completely separate concept is that of 'distribution': some sort of release package that has everything a user need to 'just run' (or build) the software. That's something assembled by a package maintainer: it contains sourcecode, docs, dependencies, and maybe even compiled binaries. Users are the audience. Release packages are only created for users when the software reaches a milestone like "1.2". It's perfectly reasonable, on the other hand, to make the (relatively small number) of developers go through some work to build the latest code: check out the latest stuff from version control, grab some tools, grab some dependencies from somewhere else, etc. It's some initial one-time overhead for people who intend to improve the software, rather than just use it. In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is: a version control system is not a package-distribution system. One is for a small group of developers, the other is for a large audience of users. Mixing the two concepts can result in a lot of pain. _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer