Re: [boost] Organizing a large project with svn:externals (Was: Boost Development Environment proposal)

From: Rene Rivera (grafikrobot_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-18 10:22:16

troy d straszheim wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 01:05:49AM -0500, Rene Rivera wrote:
>> troy d straszheim wrote:
>>> On Sat, Jun 09, 2007 at 11:04:33PM +0200, Henrik Sundberg wrote:
>>>> Internals and non intuitive commit (and perhaps meta-meta-problems)?
>>>> Are you satisfied with the use of externals overall?
>>> Very.  I wouldn't propose it otherwise.  
>> One disadvantage of externals, which you might not have run into yet, is 
>> that they become invalid when you rename a project. For example you have:
> 
> There are two ways to handle it.  One, you put revision numbers in
> with your externals, for instance here:
> 
>   http://code.icecube.wisc.edu/projects/daq/browser/meta-projects/pdaq/releases/Highland-07

OK, it's good to know one can do that.

> Or you can tag the release as a whole with a revision number as in
> here,
> 
>   http://code.icecube.wisc.edu/projects/icecube/browser/meta-projects/offline-software/releases/V01-11-01
> 
> (note the extra properties at the bottom).  In this second scheme, if
> a project does move, you'll see that things are broken at checkout and
> you'll have to specify that revision on the command line.

Doesn't seem that useful without extra tools to check the properties.

> Probably the first is better.

Definitely :-) It would allow for deterministic checkouts of historical 
releases, or any other snapshot collection. Specifically the test system 
could generate tags for the collections that get tested (assuming the 
Boost mainline uses a similar structure).

>> So either you've never renamed projects in your set up, or you have 
>> broken releases ;-)
> 
> Eh, no, not *necessarily*, but quite possibly.  The further back you
> go the more haphazard our release process was, so I bet you could find
> something that is broken.  These are physicists, not professionals.

Given that the majority of Boost developers are likely using SVN for the 
first time that puts Boost also in the "not professionals" category in 
this case ;-)

-- 
-- Grafik - Don't Assume Anything
-- Redshift Software, Inc. - http://redshift-software.com
-- rrivera/acm.org - grafik/redshift-software.com
-- 102708583/icq - grafikrobot/aim - grafikrobot/yahoo