[bug#40764] New package: r-restrserve

[Ricardo Wurmus]

zimoun <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi Chris,
>
> On Wed, 09 Dec 2020 at 19:36, Christopher Baines <mail@cbaines.net> wrote:
>
>> In the future, I'd strongly recommend not adding packages to the bottom
>> of modules, unless you really want the package definition to be
>> there. If every new definition gets added at the bottom, merge conflicts
>> become very likely. Related to this, I also moved the package definition
>> up off the bottom of the module.
>
> What do you mean?  From my understanding, we always add new R packages
> at the botton of the files cran.scm or bioconductor.scm; mainly.

The problem is 100% with tooling.  Git needs some context to apply
patches.  When you add package definitions to the bottom and that bottom
context keeps changing you will always need to tell Git how to apply that
patch.

By picking an arbitrary location somewhere in the file you avoid this
problem because it’s unlikely that other people will pick that very same
location.

> The only fix to avoid boring conflicts is to reduce the time between the
> submission and the merge, IMHO.

Not even that would be a fix, because you can have two different people
submitting patches for modifications at the bottom of the file at the
same time.  Applying them one after the other will result in the same
problem, no matter how fast we are.

Of course it’s always better to reduce time between submission and
application.

It would be *great* if we could find another way to appease git and do
the right thing for the most common case of simply adding a package
definition to the bottom of the file, no matter what context there might
be right above.

-- 
Ricardo