How to do things in an MC update stream world

Daniel Vainsencher daniel.vainsencher at gmail.com
Fri Sep 23 01:43:12 UTC 2005


Hi all. We've been discussing on the packages list how to make life 
easier on harvesters and everyone else that cares about what goes on in 
the alpha, development stages.

Here are some things that you might consider. I am not stating agreed 
policy, just a proposal for such.

1. Use MC as much as possible. IOW, try not to submit cs files. The .mcz 
files should correspond to the packages in the image - do not create new 
packages if you're trying to fix several methods in different packages. 
Just create a new version of each of the affected packages. Write a 
small paragraph describing what versions of what packages are related 
and how, and copy-paste this into all the versions you're submitting. 
Submit all your versions together into the submissions project of 
source.sqf.org when you feel they're ready for possible inclusion. The 
reason to use mcz files, though it might be easier for you to use cs 
files, is that mcz files give harvesters more tools to work with. For 
example, CS files can get stale (include old versions of code that has 
since been updated), and cause hard to detect collisions, which are 
automatically detected by MC.

2. Use proper repositories (such as the one mentioned above), not 
Mantis. Mantis can contain a link to an mcz file in a repository, that 
is as easy for you to use as an attachment. But having the actual file 
in a public repository helps accountability, because then anyone can 
easily get the original submitted version and inspect it. If you think a 
change is not ready for the submissions project, create your own 
personal project on source.sqf.org and use that.

3. Register for the sources.squeakfoundation.org RSS feed (I just found 
out about this). This way you get notified about every version that gets 
proposed or accepted. This allows you to be active in reviewing other 
peoples stuff, to see when your proposed changes get accepted, and 
generally know what's going on. This is now the equivalent of reading 
the BFAV, except you can do it from your friendly RSS client, without 
any special installation beyond subscribing to the feed. BTW, the 
squeaksource.com feed is also interesting.

Daniel Vainsencher



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