[Axiom-developer] Re: [build Axiom] updated Windows build instructions

[Ralf Hemmecke]

> We have discussed this before. The problem is that there is
> no reliable version of tla for Windows.

I feared that.

> Both Mike Thomas and
> I have tried several different versions and they all have
> problems. As far as I have been able to determine, tla is not
> being actively maintained anymore, so the prospects of a good
> Windows version seems small.

Maybe one day we will be using bazaar-ng since that seems to be actively 
maintained by the ubuntu people.

> We started using darcs for axiom--windows--1 because it works
> reliably on both Linux and Windows. Of course we probably
> also could have used CVS but at the time we were already
> moving away from it.

Clear. We should only use CVS as a way of distributing (if at all), but 
not really working with it. Its days are numbered. ;-)

> Now we are also using SVN but (possibly because of the
> SourceForge problem) I have not been able to do a complete
> checkout of anything from the SVN repository to Windows.

Have you ever tried

http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2006-09/msg00321.html

svn co -r1 https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/axiom/trunk trunk
cd trunk
svn update

on Windows?

>> The darcs archive doesn't even appear on
>>
>> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/AxiomSources
>>
>> so it is non-existing... ;-) ... only for people who want
>> to run MathAction
>>
>> http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/MathActionRepository

> I would be happy if you would correct this. I am not sure of
> the best solution. Should we ignore the merging problem and
> just call the darcs version the official sources for Windows?

I wouldn't. Better would be to sync them then I can declare on 
AxiomSource that they are the same. And sooner or later they should 
disappear anyway, because they should be merged to Gold or Silver. 
(First, of course, to Silver, but a merge with Gold was easy since we 
have "tla star-merge". The hard part is to sort out the conflicts.

>> We simply have two many source archives and potential
>> contributors have to ask at the axiom-developer mailing
>> list which one contains the blessed sources.

> Yes that is a problem. What is your suggested solution?

Document on AxiomSources. That should be the place to read about our 
source mess. ;-) If you bring axiom--windows--1 in sync with the tla 
archive, then I add the stuff to AxiomSources. I guess, you volunteer to 
be the maintainer of that branch. I haven't heard from Mike Thomas or 
Tim (who are currently the maintainers of the tla axiom--windows--1). 
Can I make you the maintainer of the darcs and tla versions?

> If someone can prove that SVN actually does work reliably on
> Windows, then maybe that would be the best option?

Probably, then axiom--windows--1 would exist as a branch on sourceforge.
But to be honest, I would rather try to avoid that and better ask for 
help from developers knowledgeable in Windows to actually do the merge now.

Ralf