Re: maintaining advanced power-user Scheme functions

[Thomas Morley]

2013/8/14 Janek Warchoł <address@hidden>:
> Hi,
>
> Harm and David N. (and some other people) write lots of very advanced
> (and very helpful!) Scheme functions.  These funcitons are improved
> over time, and there is a problem related to that: it's easy to get
> lost in all the email threads about them, and it's not always obvious
> where the most recent version is.
>
> I think that such functions should be tracked by version control, and
> i see two approaches:
> - include them in official LilyPond source as soon as they are
> created.  Upside: there's bigger chance that they will be updated when
> there are some changes. Downside: one has to write documentation and
> go through official patch submitting channels.
> - use another repository.  What about OpenLilyLib? http://www.openlilylib.org/
>
> At any rate, we better do something about it - at current state, all
> these funcitons can easily become lost or forgotten, and that would be
> a grave loss.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Janek

Hi Janek,

well, if I think one of my functions, definitions etc is worth a
patch, I do so, but ofcourse there's the risk I'm distracted by other
tasks and forget about it or I've no time or ...

The idea of version-control for such functions might be nice. But
because I'm still not very familiar with git I'm feeling kind of
ambivalent.
Otoh, it might be an idea to do so for the LSR.

Though, a lot of my functions, definitions etc are too special-cased,
written to fit some users needs or they are workarounds not worth a
patch.
The right place for them would be the LSR, _if_ the LSR would be able
to compile them and not use a LilyPond-version far too old for many of
my ideas.

There were some insinuations on the list the last months (or was it a
year already?) to upgrade the LSR and yes, one should do so.
But I hesitate to volunteer again for this task.
I initiated the last ugrade and did perhaps the major work, supported
by several developers and the great David Nalesnik.
Though there was only one, I repeat _one_, other user who tried to help:
Philippe Hezaine

@Philippe
Thanks a lot for trying to help. And let me say: You didn't waste my time!

So I was annoyed by the lack of help/interest of others and I'm still
pissed off.

After my experience from doing it once, let me say: _Every_ user can
start the LSR-upgrade. The relevant CG-chapter is in far better state
than it was the last time. Ok, there will be snippets which need some
(perhaps advanced) scheme-knowledge and there may be some which need
advice from an experinced developer. Some tasks will need to be done
by people, who have the permission (from the LSR-maintainer) to do so.
But let me repeat:

_Every_ user can start the LSR-upgrade.

Volunteers?
Be sure that I'd grant support.

Cheers,
  Harm