Re: [Tcllib-devel] Regarding SourceForge, the Tcllib CVS, and transitioning somewhere.

[Andreas K. <and...@ac...>]

On 2/15/2011 6:33 AM, Donald G Porter wrote:
> Andreas Kupries wrote:
>> One last issue. As (1) shows, we have lots of subprojects. Seven. While these
>> are all handled by a single CVS repository directory hierarchy, when going to
>> DVCS we should really split them up, each as their own XXX repository. One of
>> them, tclbench, should possibly even migrate out of the tcllib more to the
>> core itself, given that it is the core whose performance this project is
>> testing.
>
> Something to consider, if only briefly...
>
> One guideline that came out of the chat discussion on these matters is
> "Separately releaseable things should have separate repositories"
>
> So, if there's ever a dream to make separate releases of the packages
> that make up tcllib, that task will be far easier if they each go into
> their own repositories now, as part of this transition. (*)
>
> OTOH, if that's never going to happen, then that would be significant
> work for no benefit.
>
> I can support either choice, but I mention the question so the choice
> is made actively, not passively.

> (*) Or to support the ability to take a select subset of tcllib for
> re-distribution under tcl/pkgs/

Huh. Yes. A difficult topic.

On the one hand, each of the packages inside the tcllib and tklib bundles can, 
theoretically, be released on its own.

On the other hand, the forces which drove the bundling are not really gone. The 
TEA framework we have is very good for binary packages, and not so much for 
pure Tcl. With a package consisting of two files (.tcl and pkgIndex) the 
overhead is high, plus impedance mismatches in the standard code. The bundling 
allowed us to amortize the cost of maintaining a pseudo-TEA configure/Makefile 
across many packages. That is still true, I believe.

And yes, I am aware that I am possibly opening another can of worms^W^W^Wline 
of discussion here which is, I believe one of our big pain points.

-- 
Andreas Kupries
Senior Tcl Developer
ActiveState, The Dynamic Language Experts

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