autoconf update

[jhell]

On 09/17/2010 00:41, Doug Barton wrote:
> On 9/16/2010 6:15 PM, Doug Barton wrote:
>> On 9/16/2010 3:35 PM, Anonymous wrote:
>>> Dominic Fandrey<kamikaze at bsdforen.de> writes:
>>>
>>>> On 16/09/2010 19:17, Dmitry Marakasov wrote:
>>>>> * Dominic Fandrey (kamikaze at bsdforen.de) wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Just out of curiosity, why a version bump because of a build
>>>>>> dependency?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I don't think an autoconf update should have an effect on any
>>>>>> /running/ software but build systems. And I don't see how rebuilding
>>>>>> all the software improves it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This is not a criticism - I just think there is something I don't
>>>>>> understand and that worries me.
>>>
>>> My guess is to uncover *early* build failures that exp-run didn't catch.
>>
>> We shouldn't use our users to beta-test infrastructure changes.
> 
> Sorry, I'm not feeling well atm and realize that I didn't write what I
> was thinking here. What I intended to say was that we _don't_
> intentionally use the ports system to force our users to beta test
> changes. I think it goes without saying that we _shouldn't_ do this,
> although I think that changes like this are a platinum-coated example of
> why we need to have -stable and -dev branches for ports.
> 
> 
> Doug
> 

I agree with this to an extent. Having two branches while being a nice
idea is not really needed with some of the version control software that
is out there. Mercurial being the distributed version control that it is
allows you to clone, make the changes you need to the clone test it
thoroughly and then either push or pull them to the main tree. This
would allow the same work that is being done on ports right now continue
to happen with less effort and greater amount of cooperation between
users and developers alike.

The ports tree is a prime example of why we need a distributed version
control. Personally I would love to be able to say HEY! I just made
these changes to this port because it was not acting right and you can
pull my patch for it here: http://host/repo/. Once tested by whomever
Joe Blow Committee they can choose to modify it further test and or push
it to the main tree where others can update from.


Main Tree	"Users pull and clone from here"
|
`- Dev Clone	"Devs pull and clone from here and push to main"


Ports is a distributed project being used in an old non distributed
version control system. If this is going to get anywhere something needs
to change and it needs to start from the ground up.

Lets do it! no excuses, it does not take very long to convert to
mercurial including keeping history intact and there is front-ends for
this all over the place.

-- 

 jhell,v