[tex-live] p4 repository thawed

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Tue Jan 25 01:35:04 CET 2005


I think we may as well consider the p4 repository open for general
checkins again, as of now.  Sorry for the ridiculous delay and lack of
resolution.

Here is the story: first I spent a couple weeks checking in nearly the
entire repository to CVS at texlive.sarovar.org.  This was not fun, and
I felt like we would suffer from CVS's deficiencies (as several people
warned, I know, I know).  One of the worst problems would be handling
binary files (and avoiding keyword expansion).  Lack of symlinks would
also not have been fun.

I had hoped sarovar would start supporting subversion, and we could use
that.  Raj, the sarovar admin, was hoping to install the latest version
of gforge, which does support subversion.  Unfortunately, there was a
lack of Debian packages and all the prerequisite packages needed.  So
that has been basically abandoned for now.

So then, after discussing the options with Sebastian and others, we
figured the best bet was to install subversion on tug.  We could still
use the project stuff on sarovar if we were so inclined, but at least
we'd have the better source control.  So that was going more or less ok,
I had most of the repository checked in again ... and now tug has
apparently developed disk problems.  Argh!

(BTW, subversion has its own set of problems, including once again with
binary/text files, but they seemed a lot more tractable.  And the
subversion developers have been more responsive than the cvs developers,
which is nice.)

Kaja and I are discussing what to do next -- whether to buy a new
machine or replace the disk, etc.  Meanwhile, it seems well past time to
allow development to proceed.  So go for it.

I've saved a copy of the TL tree for paranoia's sake (of course we can
also get it from p4).  I still plan to make TL 2004 the base checkin
when we get subversion going.  BTW, I asked Sebastian again if he'd
rather just forget all this and keep using p4 in perpetuity, and he said
he would rather switch.  So we will persist ...

karl



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