Re: [OctDev] branch and purge

[David B. <Dav...@mo...>]

Paul Kienzle wrote:

> With the final 2.1.x release of octave-forge, we are
> ready to make a 2.1.x branch and purge the trunk of
> support for 2.1 series octave.  Can someone with
> familiarity with CVS please perform the branch
> operation on tag R2006-01-28.
>
Shouldn't the branch be for the 2.1.x releases as they are considered 
secondary. I'd say the main branch should be kept for 2.9.x developments 
as that is the future. That being the case, we can always create a 2.1.x 
branch from the R2006-01-28 tag at any time, if we feel there is a need 
for a bug fix for the 2.1.x releases of octave-forge.

Therefore, I'd suggest just purging stuff without a branch.

> For purge, we do not need to support earlier than
> 2.9.4.  Feel free to remove #ifdef's for older
> versions from your code.  Similarly, m-files can
> assume octave 2.9.x syntax and libraries.
>
Maybe there is a means of doing these semi-automatically at least for 
the *.cc files. That is we might use a hand editted Makeconf from a 
2.9.4 build to create a list of basic defines, and using that with a 
perl script to search all of the .h and .cc files and remove the 
irrelevant clauses. This should make the first purge fairly easy, though 
care will have to be taken to keep necessary ifdef's for architecture, 
and installed library dependent stuff. Things like

#ifdef DEFINE1
#ifdef DEFINE2
....
#endif
#else
...
#endif

might cause problems as well, but should be possible to work around with 
a well crafted perl script. The harder things to purge are things like

  try ar = automatic_replot;
  catch ar = 0;
  end

  unwind_protect
    ...
  unwind_protect_cleanup
    automatic_replot = ar;
  end_unwind_protect

which appear in a number if .m files to handle various versions of 
octave's built-in variables. I think this is going to be a gradual process..

> This would be an excellent time to redo the build
> system so that it is a set of independent packages.
> Any bits of common configuration information should
> be added to Octave.  Volunteers needed.
>
Waiting of John to include the packaging manager in the CVS...

D.

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David Bateman                                Dav...@mo...
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