Re: snapshots stuck

On Mar 22, 2009, at 6:41 PM, James K. Lowden wrote:

> Craig A. Berry wrote:
>> good snapshots would be a big help.
>> Or some other way to generate the bits that need to be generated.
>
> Ach.  I'm so sorry to have wasted your time, Craig.
>
> I just uploaded snapshots.  That out to get you going.

Thanks.

> I'm also attaching fwiw the BSD makefile that I use to generate the
> snapshots.  If you're so inclined, maybe you can see why the upload  
> fails
> to happen.

I don't see anything certain right off the bat.  I would guess that  
something left over from a previous run that needs to stick around for  
comparison is somehow getting in the way by making one target or  
another appear up-to-date when it's not.  But that's just speculation  
and until I get make dist working locally, I'm not in a position to  
reproduce and debug it.

> Until a few months ago, the nightly snapshot was handled by a simple
> script that ran every night, provided the system was up.  Then I had  
> the
> bright idea to provide a "nightly" snapshot of the release, too, so  
> that
> people would have immediate access to patches.  But it didn't make  
> sense
> to generate the release tarball nightly, because patches are applied
> irregularly.  I wanted the tarball date to reflect the latest patch,  
> so
> that people could gauge whether or not an earlier tarball they had was
> still the most recent.
>
> How to do that?  Comparing MD5s seemed like the right way.  And still
> does.  But I seem to have been too clever by half, and can't get the  
> thing
> to go forward when it should.  Bah.

That all makes good sense.  We're probably only one line of code away  
from perfection, so just to find that line.

Note that more current VCSs have ways to generate snapshots, such as  
git --archive, etc.  To do that and get a snapshot people can use, you  
need the generated files to be part of the repository with regenerate  
targets that will rebuild them when needed but otherwise leave them  
alone.  That might be a good idea anyway.

> I don't have time tonight to look at it.  I will get to it as soon  
> as I
> can.  If someone else spots something, it might speed things up.

No rush, and especially no reason to ruin your Sunday evening over  
it.  My attention to this will be spotty over the next few days but  
I'll report anything interesting I find.

________________________________________
Craig A. Berry
mailto:[email protected]

"... getting out of a sonnet is much more
  difficult than getting in."
                  Brad Leithauser