Hi,
as part of a recent discussion[1] on the Octave mailing list about
merging Octave and Octave-Forge, the workload of the release manager
came up as a topic.
It's simply a lot of work to release a version of octave-forge; at the
same time, individual package maintainers might want to release their
package when it's ready and don't want to wait for release managers.
I've implemented a prototype of a new release system; the basic idea is
that the first line of a check-in message is scanned. When it fits the
schema:
Release: DIR
a release of that individuall package is triggered. DIR is the path name
of the package's directory, i.e. "physical-constants" for the
"PhysicalConstants" package (that example already shows the difference
between filesystem and package name).
Triggering a release means copying the source tree, running configure
and building that single package. It generally seems to work.
Advantages:
a) Individual maintainers can release their package whenever they deem
it fit.
b) Creating a bundle boils down to taking the latest released packages
and tarring them up.
Problems (and there are quite of them):
I did this using a (converted) Mercurial archive of the octave-forge
Subversion tree. The scanning is triggered by an "incoming" hook.
Looking at [2], it seems SF provides a few hooks for the Subversion
repositories, but none of them fits trivially (both svnnotify and
ciabot don't really fit). It might be possile to track the SF
Subversion repository via hgsvn, so that problem is definitely solvable.
Another problem: to create packages, we need Octave installed on the
build host.
Both things taken together mean that we generat the packages on a host
outside of SF; tracking the repository via hgsvn should be possible.
Now, one problem: how to get the built packages back onto the SF host?
Following [3], uploading the files in an automated way seems possible.
However, I'm at a loss with the actual release via the SF mechanism.
[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.octave.maintainers/10837
[2]
http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/Subversion+-+Version+Control+for+Source+Code#tocSubversion
- Version Control for Source Code15
[3]
http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/File+Release+System+-+Offering+Files+for+Download#upload
Thomas
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Octave-dev mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/octave-dev
