Re: [Stow-devel] Stow 2.0.x release requirements

[Adam Spiers]

Hi all,

On Fri, Feb 04, 2011 at 11:16:30PM -0500, Luke Shumaker wrote:
> Stow 2.0.2 seems to be fairly mature and complete, yet it is not
> available on ftp.gnu.org, and the manual linked to on the Stow home page
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/stow/manual.html> is for the old 1.3.3
> release.  Given that there has not been a commit since 2009, it seems to
> me that if it's not actively being further developed, the improvements
> should be released, if stable.
> 
> What needs to be done for Stow 2.0.x to be considered "stable" and
> released to ftp.gnu.org?

*ARGH*.  Sorry to introduce myself to the project in such a negative
way, but I just wasted days worth of work on the old 1.3.3 branch
because there was no 2.x release on ftp.gnu.org.  I only stumbled
across the Savannah project page just now :-(  I feel stupid for not
finding it earlier, but I think it's really important that we get a
2.x release out there ASAP to prevent others making the same mistake I
made.

Sadly, several of the major changes I've made seem to overlap with the
work that exists on the 2.x branch:

  - Improved conflict handling: my branch actually helps automate
    conflict *resolution*, not just improve the reporting of
    conflicts.  Unlike the 2.x branch it does not defer operations
    until all potential conflicts have been assessed, but I like your
    approach a lot.

  - Better logging / tracing / verbosity control

  - Ignore lists: my branch uses ignore files rather than command-line
    options, and globs rather than regexps, and there are clear pros
    and cons to both sides - ideally a hybrid approach would be
    supported.  My branch also provides sensible default ignore lists
    so that stow integrates nicely with the `mr' tool
    (http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/mr/).

I did make one major change which is not yet in 2.x - I split all the
core code out into a separate Stow.pm module, leaving only the
front-end CLI code in the stow.in script.

You can see my work in progress here:

  https://github.com/aspiers/stow/commits/master

but please be aware that I am still `git rebase'-ing it regularly, so
you cannot safely merge from it yet.

My other suggestion regarding the savannah git repository here:

  http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/stow.git/log/

is to clean up the commit history in three ways:

  1. There are a very large number of commits where
     the log is 'minor' or 'minor update'.

  2. The author field is inconsistent, e.g. in a couple of cases it's
     just 'user' or 'Xandros Desktop OS User' which is probably not
     sufficient for safely tracking copyright ownership.

  3. The first commit ("Initial Import") is not a clean import of Stow
     1.3.3.

These are all minor points which would not be an issue on a private
development branch, but in a public branch, it makes it difficult for
other developers to collaborate when some of the log messages are
missing detail, and where some of the project history is missing
entirely.  Also, all of these are easily fixable via `git rebase -i'.

I'd be grateful for feedback on any/all of the above points.

Cheers,
Adam