Re: CVS is the `released version'

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Frank Schmitt writes:
>
>  > The developer says "dear build system, I think I in my package humba, I
>  > only use package foo, bar and baz". The build system installs foo, bar
>  > and baz in *a clean environment outside of the developers workspace*
>  > (e.g. a fresh CVS checkout of Emacs), tries to build humba there and
>  > reports success or failure.
>
> Oh, OK, that will work.  But that's equivalent to what XEmacs does.
> It tends toward centralization because it's most efficient if done in
> the context of a comprehensive list of packages, all available in a
> single repository.

In practice it might well be that several, probably most packages will
tend to be provided from few canonical repositories.  But making this
obligatory is not a good idea, I think.  On the other hand, if a
central repository would also keep a list of "for this package, look
there" rather than keeping possibly outdated packages, the dependency
resolution would get quite easier already without either requiring
lots of manual hunting, and with better chances of getting updates
from upstream even when they don't bother pushing them to repositories
all the time.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum