Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Vlad Glagolev <stealth AT sourcemage.org>]

Hello, mages!

As some of you may have noticed recently, I commented a few commits with the 
phrases about code quality.
I'm interested in your opinion first, but one of my aims is to make SMGL code 
better. At least in a part
I help the project with.

Also, I don't want to point at someone directly, but instead I just have a 
few advices which would
help us to improve the quality of code and therefore -- a quality of 
distribution (in my opinion).

1. When you create a new spell, try to read carefully its official 
documentation, INSTALL and README
   files inside the tarball to detect required and optional dependencies (on 
a stuff like pythonic one
   there could be suggest ones). Don't add them for fun and find what is 
really required to build.
2. If the program you try to create a spell for already exists in other 
distributions, you can look into
   their repos and see how it builds. Those are usually Arch Linux, Gentoo, 
OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD
   (since ports are built from source), maybe a few others (source-based are 
preferred though). But note,
   there could be something wrong/untested in them (it might be different, 
outdated, etc.), so please check
   every "hack" carefully under SMGL installation.
3. Look at files like configure.ac, configure, try ./configure --help to find 
out which flags are needed
   for the required and optional dependencies and/or simple options. 
Sometimes they doesn't work as they
   should. That's autotools hell, and you have to go deeper in configure.ac 
for example to find out
   which libraries/headers does the spell really need and so on.
4. On compilation (or after with ``gaze compile $spell'') look in voyeur mode 
(this option must be on in 
   sorcery) at specific warnings/errors during the configuration phase. Maybe 
something went wrong (mostly
   because of bugs in configure script) or missing some X headers, and so on.
5. There are complex spells (like ffmpeg, mpd, xine-lib, mplayer, etc.) 
containing lots of deps (and subdeps,
   and subsubdeps) but for simplicity print the summary after configure like:

--
----------------
 * input plugins:
   - file          - net
   - stdin_fifo    - rtp
   - http          - mms
   - pnm           - rtsp
   - dvb
...
--

This might be helpful to detect do the flags you've just added work properly 
or not.

6. recheck compilation log and go to installation one with ``gaze install 
$spell''. create a diff to an
   install log of the previous version of this spell and see if something is 
missing and check why (reading
   changelog, etc.)

7. Make sure (via ``gaze install $spell'') the spell doesn't execute 
update-mime-database on install stage,
   when all stuff in /usr/share/mime/* had been touched and would be removed 
on dispelling the spell. Look
   at ardour2/xine-ui/seahorse spells for the different types of possible 
fixes.

8. If you update something that is regularly updated (maintained) by another 
developer and don't know what to
   do with some extra/new dep -- drop him (or to sm-discuss@) a mail for 
information. IRC is also a good option.

I hope these simple steps will help us to make our code better. Feel free to 
comment/expand this list.

Thanks in advance.

-- 
Dont wait to die to find paradise...
--
Cheerz,
Vlad "Stealth" Glagolev

Attachment: pgpAjtwuHFNPh.pgp
Description: PGP signature