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On 11/20/14 5:15 PM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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> On Thu, 20 Nov 2014 01:36:32 +0100 |
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> hasufell <hasufell@g.o> wrote: |
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>> Exherbo is already running a more modular approach, I'd be interested |
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>> what they have to say about this or which problems they were facing. |
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> |
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> Well the big thing is that unlike Gentoo, Exherbo was able to switch to |
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> using Git for its repositories. On top of that, Exherbo also has proper |
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> automated tinderbox runs (with automated conflict resolution) for |
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> changes, including across repositories, and a much stronger culture of |
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> accepting that breaking changes to APIs and APIs that give an error on |
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> misuse are necessary for a quality product, and a tolerance of |
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> developers making those changes and then applying the fixes to other |
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> people's packages. Distributed is much easier to do if you're starting |
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> from something which is correct and verified... |
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I'm glad Exherbo has been mentioned - this gives us something specific |
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to discuss, including how it works in practice. Using git is certainly |
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an advantage. |
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Ciaran, could you share more about the automatic tinderbox runs and |
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automated conflict resolution? I look at Exherbo site from time to time |
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but didn't notice this. Please bear with my ignorance, I've even tried |
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searching for things like "Exherbo tinderbox". |
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I think you have a good point about necessity of breaking changes from |
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time to time, and APIs that give an error on misuse. This reminds me of |
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these two other good resources: |
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<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/effective-api-design> (just the |
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slides are at <http://www.newt.com/java/GoodApiDesign-JoshBloch.pdf>) |
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<https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt> |
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Note that Linus Torvalds pays very close attention to never break |
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userspace. But within the kernel, large-scale changes are not uncommon, |
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which I think is a good thing. |
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|
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Paweł |