[GRASS5] CVS tag documentation

[Markus Neteler]

On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 10:53:10AM -0500, Carl Worth wrote:
> Markus Neteler writes:
>  > Hi Carl,
>  > Sorry for this confusion... In fact the release feature freeze is
>  > exceptionally long. Therefore we'll use the Linux Kernel numbering
>  > scheme for 5.1.
> 
> I think this is a fine idea.
> 
>  > > I'm also confused about the existence as grass51 in a separate
>  > > directory/module in CVS.
>  > 
>  > Well, the reason is that grass51/ requires a complete change of the
>  > directory layout. It would be a pain to do this in CVS. Therefore
>  > we start more or less from scratch in a fresh CVS tree, which
>  > already exists (containing the new 5.1 vector library).
> 
> Large-scale restructuring of directory trees in CVS can be painful,
> indeed.
> 
> However, I'm not sure the proposed solution is much better. Developers
> will still have to create the new structure and copy the old code over
> into it with modifications and "cvs add" all files/directories. (These
> are the same steps that would be needed to do it "in place" minus
> several "cvs remove" operations).

As I am lazy, I have written some recursive scripts for that.
See grass51/tools/

ls tools/
CVS            cvs.remove      cvs.rename.file  link.conf
cvs.recursadd  cvs.rename.dir link

[the link is a trick to run the new grass51 vector library within
the old 5.0 GRASS :-) It creates the necessary links from 5.1
to 5.0 without a need to replicate the other stuff within 5.1.
Thanks to Radim.]
 
> But problems lie in the future. What happens when grass51 becomes
> stable? Do we make a new grass52 directory and go through all the work
> again? And how about all the references to checking out "grass" from
> CVS. These will all become stale and difficult to maintain for each
> major version.

No, I don't expect this because the new directory layout for
5.1 will be fine for 5.2. The only problem is the migration from
5.0 to 5.1 since the 5.0 directory layout is a bit strange due
to historical reasons. I think/hope that such a major change
is structure is needed once only (that is now).

> IMHO, it would actually be much easier to just fix the structure
> within CVS and leave the code in the "grass" module.
> 
>  > [thanks for the text piece, added to http://grass.itc.it/grasscvstags.html]
>  > 
>  > I have again slightly modified that page. Is it somewhat
>  > better now?
> 
> You're welcome. It's better, but still misleading with regards to the
> current state of the code. My paragraph suggests that the head of the
> CVS tree will always have the most recent code, (with the possible
> temporary exception of a few bug-fixes on the current "frozen"
> branch).
> 
> However, it seems that currently the head of the CVS tree is actually
> very out of date and probably not useful to anyone. So, either that
> paragraph should be updated to match the current state of affairs, or
> else the changes on the release branch should be merged back onto the
> trunk of the CVS tree.

Instad of merging back I propose to generate the new 5.1 directory
for above reasons. Carl, perhaps you also have a look at
documents/new_directory_structure.txt

It contains a proposal for the 5.1 directory layout which shall get
some "GNU style". Subject to discussion of course!

Thanks for all your comments,

 Markus