Re: Branches and DESTDIR

On Saturday, January 25, 2003, at 05:15  PM, Stefano Corsi wrote:

>> I figure that's going to be at least one
>> full month of work (and I go on contract full time later this week :)
>
> Oh I see... what are you working on? Do you  work as a java programmer?

Well ... when I'm working :) ... I took off the last year to work on 
moto and other moto related projects. But now the bills are beginning 
to pile up :) so I'm taking on a small one to two month job which 
hopefully will cover bills so I can do one or two more major moto 
releases right after.

>> ). The repository and build system doesn't make branches for bugfix
>> releases that easy to do so we should make sure everything is working
>> pretty well before we embark on the next big job.
>
> Why is it difficult to have branches? It would be very useful.

Its not especially difficult I suppose. Its the merging of new features 
with the bug fixes on the main branch that I worry about. I've never 
had an easy time merging branches back to the main branch in CVS ... I 
always end up having to commit my bug fixes in two codebases which is 
just annoying. But I suppose with three of us active in the codebase at 
this point I should come up to speed on the right way to do things. 
Perhaps once 0.18.0 is released we'll branch there so 0.18.X series 
bugfix releases can be built from the branch if we need to.

You could also branch the moto repository now to start work on 
inheritance and then we do whatever we need to to merge that branch 
back when we're done. I wouldn't be opposed to that either. I'll just 
go back up the repository now in case something goes wrong :)

>  Now, for
> example, I'm always a bit scared before committing. I guess there are
> backups, but...

:)

> Another question: do you think that adding a DESTDIR variable to all 
> the
> Makefiles could be difficult or have misterious implications? I would 
> like to
> make a SRPM of moto, but I need to pass a compile DESTDIR to the 
> Makefile.

I have been looking for someone who knows something about RPMs and 
Makefiles (I don't :) ) to take on this task for close to 6 months now! 
You would be my personal hero if you could get this done :) I think 
having both source and binary distros available as RPMs could 
significantly increase the number of moto users.

-Dave

> rgds,
> 	Stefano
>