OSLib cvs repository

[Tony van der Hoff]

On 18 Jun 2002, in message <66caa7484b.tom at compton.compton.nu>,
Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:

> In message <3e8699484b.Tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk>
>           Tony van der Hoff <tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> 
[snip]

> Certainly swi is intended to be treated as an extension, but telling the
> RISC OS CVS port to treat it as such has rather unfortunate side effects...
> 
This is all becoming a bit negative IMHO. How do you, for instance, cope with
filename translation on importing .c or .h files? Why should .swi (and for
that matter, .y and .asm) be treated any differently? 

IMHO, OSLib is a RISC OS product, and its primary development platform should
be RISC OS; it is not unreasonable, therefore, to expect the majority of
developers to use one of the the RISC OS CVS clients. 

However, that said, Stewart has done some sterling work on porting DefMod,
and with a little effort, and a cross-assembler, I believe OSLib can be built
under Linux, to some advantage. This would be my next OSLib project as soon
as I get a Linux box. If UNIX filename translation was not in place, then
that would be more difficult to achieve. 

The RISC OS community have accepted UNIX filename translation as a norm; and
I see no reason to break with this. I believe I made the right decision in
this case; your opinion may vary, but I've done all the work so far, and
presently don't propose to re-do it.

As for a solution to your specific problem, I'm sure I've seen utilities
which scan through a directory structure after checkout to perform the
filename translation that you are seeking. If not, then it shouldn't be too
hard to write a portable one, which would be a useful contribution to both
platforms...

[snip]
> 
> I'm sure it does. What doesn't work is doing the checkout on a linux
> box (or a windows box) and then either mounting it on RISC OS or copying
> it across to RISC OS which is a bit of a pain as far as I'm concerned.
> 
Yes, I'm sure it is. However, I believe the pain can be readily, if not
easily, relieved, and I can't see a sensible alternative. Scrapping filename
translation in its entirety doesn't, IMHO, qualify as sensible. However, this
being the "team" list, perhaps you would like to contribute a workable
proposal to satisfy everybody...

[snip]
> > If you're using John's port, see if this produces the right results for
> > you.
> 
> I'm sure that will work - the problem is that I did my checkout on my
> linux box because it's more convenient that way. In fact I didn't even
> realise you could do cvs over ssh on RISC OS.
> 
Well, as you've found, it's evidently not "more convenient", as it doesn't
work as it stands; we all know the RISC OS file naming convention is
different to the UNIX one, so at some stage there has to be translation
involved if you're doing cross-platform work. 

Maarten Bezemer <m.m.bezemer at student.utwente.nl> has ported a SSH-capable
CVS. I, and a number of others, are alpha testing it, and although it has a
number of minor issues, it seems to do the job well. I believe he is
intending a wider release in the next few weeks. If you email him, I'm sure
he'll welcome you as a tester.

I believe my implementation is the most general one in terms of
cross-platform compatibility; can you convince me with logical argument that
I'm wrong?

Cheers, Tony

-- 
Tony van der Hoff         | MailTo:tony at mk-net.demon.co.uk
                          | MailTo:avanderhoff at iee.org
Buckinghamshire, England  | http:www.mk-net.demon.co.uk