Discussion of Spells and Grimoire items

["Eric Sandall" <eric AT sandall.us>]

Greetings SMGL Gurus,

I am here to write about some of the changes we are going through, namely
the removal of the devel grimoire from (easy) public access.  This is
being done so that all (well, most) of our users will be using either test
or stable, and so bug reports will be against those two grimoires, and
devel can now, truly, be our playground, where if we break something
horribly, it will only screw up other developers' (and a few adventurous
users') systems.  :)  We'll now be working towards making test more stable
than it currently is, and stable even more so (there's been some great
work in this direction recently), which this move from devel should
(hopefully) assist.

Here I will list what is allowable (yes, it's flexible, but please ask me
beforehand) in each grimoire:

Devel:
* Anything goes
* No really, /anything/ goes, as long as it's 'sane' (i.e. no 'rm -rf /*.*
in BUILD')

Test:
* Bug fixes
* Minor version bumps if they've been tested in devel for at least two
weeks (there should be no reason to pull versions in for missing SOURCE
files, as our mirror /should/ have them, if not, submit a bug report for
the Web Team to figure out why they're not being stored).
* New features which have been tested for three (3) weeks in devel (i.e.
new init system, new (and better, thanks W0rf!) handling of the linux
spell, etc.)

Stable:
* Bug fixes (preferebly already been tested in test for two weeks). *
Version updates (again, two weeks of testing in test first, please). * New
features (as before) which have been tested in test for three (3) weeks.

This means that (for the most part) spells in test have actually been
tested (well, if they're even used, I think some of our spells aren't used
at all and receive no testing. :() for 2 weeks by the developers before
being pulled into test.  New features have been waiting for 3 weeks with
testing.  Spells in stable have been tested for 4 weeks by both the
developers and our users before coming and, and new features have been
tested for 6 weeks.

Now then, all of you should already be familiar with the Perforce
Quickstart Guide[0] and the Grimoire Guru's Handbook[1], so I'll just move
along to how I'd like things to be fixed.  Since these bug reports will be
against either test or stable (some may be against devel as well), when
working on the bug report, first check to see if it hasn't already been
fixed in a prior grimoire (devel is prior to test, test prior to stable,
etc.), and if it is fixed there, just integrate[2] it in (don't copy!)
(make sure there aren't other big changes hidden in there).

If it hasn't been fixed in a prior grimoire, then fix it in the grimoire
which it was made against, create a unified diff[3] and patch the prior
grimoire.  If it is a "blocking" bug (i.e. doesn't install without the
fix) and the problem exists in a lower grimoire (stable is lowest, devel
highest, patches filter down. ;)) then /integrate/ the fixes down.

For those of you whom like to move spells around (or want to integrate
changes in whole directories), use the integration notes from [0], and
then 'p4 delete <old location>/...' the old stuff (if moving directories).

Really Soon Now(TM) Seth and I will be working on importing the Perforce
repository into CVS (thanks Bas!) and we'll hopefully have them syncing
with each other (Perforce<->CVS), so then all of our gurus will be able to
put in their fixes without waiting for my slow a...butt to get around to
it.  ;)

On another note, I'm still looking for people to fill in for section leads
(not other section leads, we need more blood ;)), so if any of you know
others whom would be interested, please bring them to my attention (e-mail
or IRC, though I'm not on the latter much since XChat refuses to connect
from my laptop....I hate ksirc!).  I am also looking for someone to fill
in for Assistant Grimoire Lead.  This position is mainly for someone whom
likes to run around fixing things and creating utter mayhem in the devel
grimoire.  ;)  It's also good if they like to patch a few things now and
then and fix up test and stable (just so you know, I prefere the latter
:)).

I think that's enough for now :),

-sandalle

[0] http://wiki.sourcemage.org/index.php?page=PerforceQuickstart

[1] http://wiki.sourcemage.org/index.php?page=GrimoireGurusHandbook

[2] Ex:
$ p4 integ //sgl/devel/grimoire/disk/lilo/...
//sgl/test/grimoire/disk/lilo/...
$ p4 resolve
# Check the changes
$ p4 submit

[3] Ex:
p4/smgl/grimoire/test/disk/ $ cp -r lilo lilo.old
# Do fixes and Perforce stuff
p4/smgl/grimoire/test/disk/ $ diff -uN lilo lilo.old > lilo.patch
# Apply lilo.patch to lilo in devel

-- 
PGP Key Fingerprint:  FCFF 26A1 BE21 08F4 BB91  FAED 1D7B 7D74 A8EF DD61
http://search.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8EFDD61

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Eric Sandall                     |  Source Mage GNU/Linux Developer
eric AT sandall.us                  |  http://www.sourcemage.org/
http://eric.sandall.us/          |  SysAdmin @ Inst. Shock Physics @ WSU
http://counter.li.org/  #196285  |  http://www.shock.wsu.edu/