Re: Snapshot branch?

[John Mandereau]

Cameron Horsburgh wrote: 
> Hi folks,
> 
> I'm guessing the developers will soon be bending their thoughts
> towards version 2.11, and I'm looking forward to trying it out! 
> 
> I'm wondering if it will be possible to modify the GUB somehow so the
> development branch and the stable branch can coexist on my system. I'd
> like to be able to play around with development versions, hunt bugs
> and so on, but I'd like to be able to do it without worrying about
> losing a stable version if the development version breaks.

That's already what I do. If you are on GNU/Linux, that's easy: install
the stable branch binaries as root (in /usr/local/lilypond with GUB),
and create a new user only for testing LilyPond development branch, by
installing GUB binaries as that user. If that user's path is set
correctly (e.g. $HOME/bin is the first dir in PATH), that user (and only
that user) will run the development version by default.

I guess it may work similarly on other Unix flavors like BSD and Mac OS
X (I don't know actually), but it is certainly more difficult on
Windows.

> I remember in the dark ages (around version 2.2?) Pedro Kroeger
> packaged a Debian version of unstable that could be called with a
> different binary name --- lilypond-snapshot, convert-ly-snapshot and
> so on. Would this sort if thing be doable currently? Is it just a case
> of redefining binary names and directory hierarchies in the build
> script?

That's not more necessary with the solution above.


> I can foresee some problems --- for example, lilypond.el would need to
> be modified to take advantage of it, as would other
> editors/environments. This shouldn't be too hard to work around, though.

I use lilypond.el from the stable branch when editing .ly files for the
development brach too. The only minor inconvenience is that new reserved
words are not highlighted, but as long as LilyPond synatx doesn't
radically change, these are not so common. Maybe it would work to
include lilypond-start.el from the development branch in the .emacs of
the LilyPond-testing user, with correct path to lilypond.el (that's
explained in LilyPond docs); this would hopefully override the
lilypond.el that may be installed in /usr/share/emacs.


> I also realise a lot of work has gone on recently behind the scenes
> --- getting the GUB right, moving to git, sorting out the translation
> infrastructure and so on. However, the payoff could be a much larger
> tester base.

Just a little precision: the docs translation infrastructure is still in
development stage.

Best regards
-- 
John Mandereau <address@hidden>