Re: [Chicken-hackers] Re: repository branching

[Peter Bex]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:44:38AM +0100, felix winkelmann wrote:
> >  I think that's what currently happens (chicken-setup *always* installs
> >  the latest version for your chicken release), but I think that's
> >  also what we do not *want* to happen.
> 
> Quite the opposite: for a pre-3.0.0 chicken, chicken-setup installs
> the egg from the release/2 branch - this is what we *want* to
> happen to not surprise users of old chickens.

That's why I said it installs the latest version *for your chicken release*.

> >  To take an example from Ruby; its rubygems are very much like eggs.
> >  With that, you can say gem install --version 1.2.0 rails
> >  for instance, and you get the outdated 1.2 version of Rails. At work
> >  we still have some sites running on that version and 2.0 is
> >  incompatible with it, so we *need* this functionality.  However, on
> >  all systems we have the same version of Ruby itself installed, since
> >  1.8.something has been out for ages and hasn't really changed a lot.
> 
> But isn't it nearly impossible to formalize what particular set of 
> chicken+eggs
> is compatible with each other? Once I install version X.Y.Z of a given egg
> manually, I have lost any assurance that it really works with the set of eggs
> I already have installed. Stating what works with what explicitly is very hard
> to get right and possibly not even known.

Example:

egg foo requires egg bar.

Version 1.0 of foo is released for Chicken 2 and Chicken 3.
It requires version 1.1 of bar.

This means you need an egg file for every egg release.  Chicken-setup will
fetch the latest egg it can find *with compatibility for your chicken version*,
as stated by the meta file.  It would be an error if bar turns out not to
exist for all the same chicken versions foo is said to support.  (salmonella
could check this, BTW)

I don't see how this is much harder than what we have now.

> >  In any case, the current release system is just getting
> >  in the way, not just in the above example but in general.  People are
> >  confused about the layout and having as many 'trunk's per egg as you
> >  have releases is bound to cause problems sooner or later.
> 
> You are confused because you try to maintain old eggs. Just switching
> from .../eggs/NAME to ../eggs/release/3/NAME is something that I
> cannot accept being confusing. Saying "people are confused" without
> being more specific is handwaving.

As you've seen yourself, some people weren't even aware that version 3 has
been released.

Cheers,
Peter
-- 
http://sjamaan.ath.cx
--
"The process of preparing programs for a digital computer
 is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically
 and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic
 experience much like composing poetry or music."
                                                        -- Donald Knuth

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