Re: [Vampire-public] Comments about recent news & some ideas about the future

[Nicolas Burrus]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2004 at 10:01:17AM +0100, Akim Demaille wrote:
> >>> "Nicolas" == Nicolas Burrus <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>  > Hi all,
> 
> Hi one,
> 
>  > So what's the point? We would like to share the host informations
>  > for Olena and Transformers.
> 
> Actually, it seems to me that another critical feature would be to
> have Vampire probe the machines to set up this configuration file.  I
> don't trust users for this.
> 
> I don't think we need something like the Autoconf machinery, a simple,
> robust, and generic parsing of -v, --version, -V etc. should suffice.

I agree with you, it would be a nice thing to have Vampire checking
all this information automatically. Actually, I'd like to have a way
to manually configure Vampire with a lot of flexibility in a first
step, and then we should add all the automatic probes, default
parameters, etc. which make the life of the user easier.
 
> 
>  > And then, it is up to the tarball configuration file to create
>  > virtual host classes, corresponding to the specific needs of the
>  > package to be tested. You may think that it's a pity to have to
>  > take care about host specific information (software versions, etc.)
>  > in the tarball configuration file, but I really don't see how to
>  > avoid it.
> 
> I subscribe to this.
>
> I like your plan a lot, but the main issues will be... who will
> implement this?  Who still has time to devote to Vampire?

I hope I'll do :) In my opinion, the most important part for now isn't
to have a lot a features, but rather to have strong and extensible
basis. I think the configuration files changes are part of these
basis.  Once we have them, I will be happy to see Vampire used in the
external world, maybe receiving contributions, etc. But I don't think
that Vampire has already reached this step. And I am relly eager to
help Vampire to reach at least this step, that's why I think I will
probably find some time :-)