[REBOL] Re: [Fwd: Re: RSL: Rebol Standard Library]
From: chris:starforge at: 24-May-2001 17:53
#24-May-01# Message from *GS Jones*:
Hi GS,
> believe that it is manageable if done from the outset. Merely/only
> *replacing* older packages with newer packages opens up the kind of
> problems that Microsoft developed with their method of redistributable
> libraries. I am not terribly familiar with CVS, but I guess the ideal
> method taps into a CVS tree to either get the right version and/or the
> most recent version, depending on the application developers needs and
> intentions.
Good points, especially that about versioning - the last thing we we want is
to be the creators of out own "DLL Hell". As you say, allowing the required
version to be explicitly specified is a very good idea, but I would say that
we need a bit of flexibility, for example:
- Requesting Foo vN.M will return exactly that version
- Requesting Foo vN will return the latest revision of version N of Foo
- Requesting Foo will return the latest revision of the latest version.
If the specification of the system demands that revisions must be backwards
compatible while versions do not need to be this will allow people to obtain
the latest bugfix of a package without necessarily knowing the revision
required.
As for using cvs... As a unix programmer I'm all for that idea, but it would
be conterintuitive for a lot of Rebolutionaries. cvs is not the simplest of
systems for people to learn, and if this is to be a sucess I think it needs
to be hassle free. A secondary problem is that setting up cvs to do this
requires one or more cvs servers, keeping them all in synch could cause
serious logistical problems.
I'd suggest that a better solution would be a REBOL script to do all this:
REBOL has all the facilities built in to do what we need, and there is no
need for a special server: the files could be obtained from a webserver
using read. This has the nice side effect that it would be possible to synch
the mirrors very easily - there's no need to do checkouts and checkins
all over the place. Something as simple as a couple of ftp sessions (or
even a cron triggered script) could do it.
Of course, this means we actually have to write this thing :)
Chris
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If you're not very clever you should be conciliatory.
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