Re: contributing instructions are misleading!

[James]

On 01/01/14 17:50, Jean-Charles Malahieude wrote:
> Le 01/01/2014 18:07, Urs Liska disait :
> > Am 01.01.2014 18:02, schrieb Phil Holmes:
> > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Urs Liska" <address@hidden>
> > >
> > > > But you're led to believe that LilyDev is the canonical environment
> > > > for working on LilyPond, and if you dare to go another route you'll be
> > > > on your own and heading for trouble.
> > >
> > > Well - since you're the only one running your specific environment,
> > > that's generally true.  With a VM that many of us run, it's not.
> >
> > Is that true? Most Lilypond devs work in a VM?
>
> I compile on native Fedora. I don't know by how would be multiplied a 
> 90 minutes "make -j3 && make -j3 doc" on my dual-core with 2gigs RAM 
> when launched in a VM.
Probably not as much as you think. Assuming you have reasonably modern 
CPUs with VT-x/d enabled. It's very convenient to use a VM than your own 
base system, but it does take disk space I guess (for the extra OS). You 
also get trivial abilities to clone/snapshot and/or freeze VMs that I 
have found helpful in the past. Indeed before Patchy scripts it was how 
I used to test patches without having to keep rebuilding a baseline 
image for the reg test comparisons.

However, how often are you building full doc? And why - when we have 
others who do this. We have scripts don't we that allow you to build 
*just* sections or *just* languages instead of everything. It's not like 
it's mandatory for most, if hardly any, developers. So saying that make 
doc takes too long for 'me' to develop for LilyPond is not really an 
argument (not that I am saying you were saying that but I think building 
doc taking a long time is a non-issue from a developer point of view 
when we have the likes of me and Phil to test all that for you if needed).

However I have to take issue with Urs comment about:

--snip--

... it's irritating that you're led to believe you have to download 
LilyDev while actually you just can add a few things to your existing 
setup and continue to work in your daily environment.

--snip--

a 'few things'?

Seriously? I've built lilydev for the last 3 or 4 iterations and I can 
tell you it _isn't_ a few things. It's nigh on three quarters of a gig 
of stuff (build dep, dblatex etc.), oh and you are checking the versions 
of the installed components aren't you or are you assuming that the 
upstream repositories are not now containing things that are 'too new' 
or now break things when they didn't before (gcc I seem to recall had 
some issues). So no, it really isn't a few things.

Besides the fact that this statement is simply not true, it misses the 
point completely.

If you are OK with downloading the latest and greatest tgz of font forge 
and recompiling it (which you had to do for a long while) as well as 
oddities like astyle etc., then LilyDev is clearly not for you and I 
don't see anywhere where '..you're led to believe...' that you have to 
download LilyDev.

The first paragraph of CG 2.0 states:

"Want to submit a patch for LilyPond? Great! Never created a patch 
before? Never compiled software before? No problem! This chapter is for 
you and will help you do this as quickly and easily as possible. "

I think you (Urs) need CG 1.3 not CG 2.0.

However, as I think has already been stated, if you take LilyDev now and 
put it in a VM you can guarantee the build environment. If you take a 
random Linux distribution (and let's not even consider Windows or Mac 
OS) you cannot guarantee anything. I know, I have tried to rebuild a new 
LilyDev, on and off, for the last few months with different Linux OSes 
now that trying to use the later Ubuntu versions has so much bloat that 
I cannot get a disc image less than 1.7GB (lilydev as it is today and as 
I use today BTW is 600MB).

If you are comfortable with making patches and compiling, LilyDev is 
probably not for you. If you are not or want a ready-to-go environment 
and don't care that it's on some 'old' Linux release (i.e. not new and 
shiny) then LilyDev is perfectly fine.

James