RE: [Plplot-devel] Re: [Plplot-cvs] CVS update notice (plplot/bindings/tcl)

[Alan W. I. <ir...@be...>]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Geoffrey Furnish wrote:

> Alan W. Irwin writes:
>  > Please let me know if there are any good reasons to keep these files under
>  > cvs control.
>
> [...] configure would work but the build
> would fail, and they'd send trouble reports in like the Great Flood.
>
> When I got so tired I could stand it no longer, I just added the files
> to the repo so that would-be users wouldn't be triped up over such a
> small thing.
>
> That was before we had binary releases.  I dunno, maybe it would be
> okay to go back to the "no generated files in the repo" posture now,
> figuring that anyone skipping the .rpms and just checking out the
> source directly, can handle a build.  But note that some users took
> particular exception to the fact that they had to have perl installed
> in order to build the Tcl binding :-).
>
> Checking the files in was the act that stemmed the tide.  If you want
> to unplug the dike, its on you.  :-).

I have a feeling that our users are a different bunch now.  For one thing most
of them probably use Linux which will have perl almost automatically.  Also,
one hopes that the perl/tcl/python scripting language flamefests have cooled
down a bit.  I prefer python for myself, but I don't give a damn if perl and
tcl are on my machine and are actively used in a number of ways to make
my life easier.

Will it confuse cvs if I remove the 3 generated files from cvs control, but
then change my mind later and want to put them under cvs control again?

If changing my mind is no problem to cvs (meaning I can always go back if
there is a storm of protest), then I think the right thing to do is to treat
these generated files the same way we do the configure script; exclude them
from cvs control but generate them for the tarball release.  This only puts
the onus on those of us here on the developer's list (and perhaps a few
more) that are building from CVS to be sure that they have perl.

Any objections to having perl on your machine from the developers here?

Alan