[Fontinst] Development history reconstruction
Lars Hellström
Lars.Hellstrom at residenset.net
Sun Jun 21 13:34:29 CEST 2009
I'm not sure if this is anything anyone cares about anymore, but I
anyway think I should mention it:
I've begun reconstructing the development history of fontinst,
in the form of a git repository.
What prompted me to do this was a request last year (I think from Karl
Berry) about resolving a problem with TeX Live, CTAN, and teTeX all
providing different versions of fontinst (1.926, 1.928, and 1.929
respectively, or something like that). My first impulse was then an
"I'd better build a release of the most recent version 1.932, then",
but there turned out to be a catch: I couldn't find it! The directory
where I thought I had the head of development turned out to contain
another 1.929... After looking in a few more places, I had still found
nothing better, but it had become clear that searching manually would
take time; I had _many_ versions of fontinst scattered around the hard
drives.
Since I did encounter the tarball from which teTeX had gotten v1.929 I
used that to fulfill the request, but resolved to sort it all out
eventually; however I realised I would first have to do something to
automate the process, and it was not until the last few weeks that I
finally got around to this. In 108 directories, my script found
instances of fontinst versions
1.335
1.504 (probably from CTAN:fonts/psnfss, kind of squashed)
1.801
1.802 (probably an 1.801 with some extra junk file confusing the
automated scan-for-version code)
1.901
1.903
1.905
1.908
1.910
1.914
1.915
1.916
1.921
1.923
1.924
1.925
1.926
1.928
1.929
1.932 (in 6 different locations, 4 of which have different contents)
1.933
that it then collected in a repository. The next step is to clean these
up (since many contain unrelated files, and some are just .dtx sources)
and reconstruct a development history from these, just for the sake of
having one (archaeology can be fun!).
One thing that may be observed is however that there are gaps in the
above sequence -- I'm pretty sure 1.900 and 1.904 have both been
uploaded to CTAN, and the sources themselves speak of versions such as
1.512 and 1.7 -- so if anyone out there is still sitting on a copy of
such a beast, then I'd be interested to include it in the history.
(Furthermore the 1.504's and early 1.9xx's I have are pretty mangled,
so a proper release archive from these periods would be useful for
reference.) I expect I'll end up lying a bit, touching up preambles
here and there to make sure they work with available materials, and
certainly rebuilding some directory structures, but nothing major.
The question is what to do then... I should certainly make a CTAN
release out of the tip of trunk (once I've merged the various 1.93?'s
into one), and I can make the repository available for download (right
now it's about 12MB, but it'll probably shrink a bit once cleaned up),
but perhaps a more ambitious approach would be preferable? It appears
fontinst is still available as a project name on SourceForge...
Another issue is what to do with the non-core material that got caught
by the initial collection. Version 1.335 in particular came with an
impressive contrib directory, but it seems version increments >0.001
have generally thrown away all such auxiliary materials. As there is
probably some bitrot involved, doing so may be wise as far as CTAN is
concerned, but in a historical archive it could be more fun to let them
accumulate (especially if kept as a separate module). There could even
be a point in adding other fontinst packages of current or historical
significance, even if they have always had separate distribution:
cyrfinst, mathfnt, and psnfss are things that come to mind. But this
must of course be conditioned by approvals of the various authors.
Well, that's enough of me rambling! Reactions, thoughts, suggestions
anyone?
Lars Hellström
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