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

[Adam Spiers]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 12:20 AM, Kahlil Hodgson
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Adam,
>
> Glad to see another stow hacker about and I'm sure Troy is too:-)

:-)

Is Troy still around though?  He doesn't seem to have posted anything
since this in December 2009:

    http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.stow.devel/1702

and his last commit was in July 2009.

> I'm not directly involved with stow development any more and I believe
> Troy is the current maintainer, however I can fill you in on some of the
> history.  Basically, there is none between 1.3.3 and 2.0.1. The later
> version was the first public release of a new code base.  The work done
> by Chris, Austin, Geoff, Emil and myself between 2007 and 2009 was part
> of a private in-house project that I got permission to donate back to
> GNU. The SVN history between 2007 and 2009 is no longer accessible to me
> (it may be on a tape backup at my old job) and is not really that
> interesting.

Ah :-(  It may not be interesting, but it would have been useful for
present and future developers, because then `git blame' could help
explain why code is the way it is.

By the way, GREAT job with the rewrite.  The code is *way* easier to
read and work with, and having a comprehensive test suite is
fantastic.

> Sadly, I never had the spare time to wrap my head around all the
> savannah stuff and get the new version released properly.  Thankfully,
> Troy came along and was willing to take over as maintainer.  You thought
> on moving the stow core into a library seem like a good and I think Troy
> may have suggested that same in the passed.  More testing and
> documentation would be good too :-)
>
> Anyway, hope this helps to clear up some stuff.

It does indeed - many thanks for the quick response!

Anyway, here's what I intend to do next:

  - Transplant the current savannah git master branch onto my git->cvs
    import of the old CVS repository.

  - Move Troy's experimental stuff into a separate branch and clean up
    the author name/email on these commits.

  - Where appropriate, forward-port some post-1.3.3 commits from the
    old CVS repo to the head of the 2.x branch (it looks like your
    rewrite was based on the 1.3.3 release rather than CVS HEAD).

  - Add my support for ignore list files.  I might send a separate
    mail to this list about the design.

  - Split the core code off into Stow.pm.

  - (Maybe) port my conflict resolution code over.

  - Fix a few other minor issues I've noticed.

I've submitted a request to be part of the savannah project.  If
someone gives me push access to the repo then I'll push my work.
Otherwise I'll publish it via github.

Cheers,
Adam