Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Some "How Do I" questions

[Colin Walters]

On Fri, 2003-09-05 at 21:26, Miles Bader wrote:

> It's a cool thing about arch that it makes it sooo easy to export ones
> changes (in a usable form) that it really does promote sharing.

Definitely.

> I'm not sure what you mean -- it doesn't really `expect' anything, it
> just gateways changes back and forth between whatever arch branch is the
> default in the project tree being used for syncing, and whatever CVS
> thinks is current (i.e., usually HEAD, but possibly a sticky tag).

That makes sense.

> In a sense, since CVS is still (thinking positively here :-) the main
> repository for the emacs sources, I consider emacs--cvs-trunk the
> `mainline' arch branch too, and think of the actual gatewaying as just
> an implementation detail.

Ahh, ok.  When I first did the switch, I wasn't thinking of CVS anymore
as the main repository for Rhythmbox - I was thinking of it more as
where I pick up translations and patches from the people remaining who
haven't converted to arch.

But so far I've been pretty committed to continually merging --mainline
with --cvs, so it does probably make more sense for them to be the same
actual branch.

I think I'll switch to your model; I'll just do one final star-merge of
--cvs into --mainline, and then from then on just do all the
synchronization work in --mainline.

> The arch->cvs part is basically the same; the differences are that my script:
> 
>  (1) Doesn't do any kind of merging from another arch branch.

Right.  I'm going to abandon this though.  You've made me realize it is
unnecessary complexity for my situation, which is pretty similar to
yours.  Except I have a bit more flexibilty because Rhythmbox is not as
large a project as Emacs :)
 
>  (5) _Doesn't_ attempt to do any automatic ChangeLog updating.  This is
>      as much a cultural issue as anything, and since I wrote my script
>      for emacs, that means traditional ChangeLogs (arch auto changelogs
>      seem convenient to merge, but tend to be rather bloated, and I'm
>      pretty sure RMS would have a fit if anything like that showed up in
>      the emacs ChangeLogs).

Heh; yeah, the other rb developers complained a little bit about the
arch changelogs.  Personally I rather like them actually.

So how exactly are you handling ChangeLog then?  Manually?

>      Of course one result is that ChangeLog conflicts are the biggest
>      pain with doing this gatewaying, so I hope to write an automatic
>      ChangeLog de-conflicter soon (it shouldn't be so hard since in
>      general it's OK just to re-order the entries a bit).

Yeah, they are a pain.  Eventually I hope to convert all the other
Rhythmbox developers to arch, and then just autogenerate ChangeLog using
`tla changelog`.

> Er, sorry for the length of this... hopefully there's some info there
> somewhere.

It was very useful (not to mention your scripts!).