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Re: Archive unification progress
From: |
Tom Howard |
Subject: |
Re: Archive unification progress |
Date: |
Tue, 18 Jan 2005 11:00:27 +1100 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (Windows/20041206) |
Hi Peter,
Peter Simons wrote:
> Tom Howard writes:
>
> > 1) Exactly what meta data was the xml supposed to
> > provide?
>
Sorry, my bad. I meant what was it supposed to provide above and beyond
the plain text format. Sorry if I'm being dense, but I just don't get it.
> > 2) What is the exact plain text format at this point?
>
> The plain text format is the one your macros are marked-up
> in too, right now. It supports the tags @synopsis, @author,
> and @version for meta-data. All other "dnl ..." text is
> documentation, lines that are indented are block quotes.
> That's it. ;-)
Cool. I must have read this format somewhere, but I can't find it right
now. Is it still up on the GNU site?
> > 3) How does this differ from the sf archive format?
>
> sf.net has some experimental extensions (@copyright?), but
> I'm not sure what exactly those are and what they do. Guido,
> do you have a description of those tags somewhere?
Seeing as you said the XML format is dead, how about we create a unified
plain text format (I'm more than willing to work on the tool the
generate the html or xhtml/css). Here is a suggested extendible format
in a bison'esc format.
dnl: 'dnl' | '#'
space : ' '
heading : dnl space '@' string
doc_line : dnl space string newline
| dnl newline
synopsis : dnl space '@synopsis' space string newline
description: dnl space '@desc' newline doc_line+
author: dnl space '@author' space string newline
version: dnl space '@version' space string newline
copyright: dnl space '@copyright' space string newline
| dnl space '@copyright' newline doc_line+
category: dnl space '@category' space string newline
package: dnl space '@package' space string newline
license: dnl space '@license' space string newline
| dnl space '@license' newline doc_line+
section : heading newline doc_line+
| heading space string newline
macro : 'AC_DEFUN([' macro_name '],' newline '[' macro_contents ']'
newline '])dnl' macro_name
documented_macro : synopsis+ description section* version category*
package* author+ copyright* license* macro
What does everyone think? It's just something I whipped up in 10
minutes, so I'm sure it could do with lot's of feedback (don't be
gentle, I've got a thick skin).
> > 4) Exactly what information do you want in the macro?
>
> Originally, I wanted a macro to contain all information
> necessary to implement the procedures described in:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/ac-archive/policy.html
>
> Most of all, I wanted to allow dependencies and
> cross-references between macros.
I guess the best way would be to use the m4 code itself to check for
dependencies, otherwise handwriting the dependencies could become old
and out of sync.
If we get a unified format and archive, can we look at dependencies as a
second phase? From what I can see neither archive has this feature, so
to me it doesn't make sense to make it a requirement of unification.
I assume by cross-references you mean a link to another macro. Would
this just be for dependant macros or for other purposes as well? If
it's for other purposes, can you give an example?
> Packages of macros have
> been a missing feature ever since, too.
I've put packages in the format, but I would suggest we wait and see how
they are used before doing any more.
>
> > Now I assume you are using some automated tool to
> > generate the html from the macro (I'm guessing this is
> > where the haskal is coming in), correct?
>
> Yes, the software I use is written in Haskell. It reads the
> marked-up macro files and generates pretty much everything
> you see on-line at www.gnu.org/software/ac-archive at the
> moment.
>
>
> > I've got some experience with php, so if I know the plain
> > text format, I should be able to generate xhtml/css, the
> > advantage being that php is readily available and can be
> > used from both a web server and from the command line. Do
> > you want me to give it a shot?
>
> I definitely welcome any help! I just think we'd need to get
> a grip on the markup format we'll use in the future first.
> If there ever was a chance to make changes and improve
> things, it would be now. ;-)
Cool. Let's get the format discussion going, see what comes out and
talk about the tool after that.
> > What specifically is preventing unification of the two
> > archives?
>
> We are using different tools, have different priorities,
> already have different contents to some degree. I doubt
> we'll unify the two archives (as in: make sf.net obsolete)
> any time soon. The best we can do is to make sure both
> archives have the same content -- and even that is
> difficult, because that objective greatly limits the changes
> either one of us can make to the software.
The first step seams to be unifying the format and the tools. Let's try
to get there first.
> Guido Draheim writes:
>
> > Anyway, I am not sure whether a live representation via
> > php is even allowed on the gnu webserver - the gnu
> > webserver seems to be generally represented in a second
> > CVS area at savannah.
>
> You are right, www.gnu.org does serve only static pages. All
> web contents is checked into CVS at Savannah, then it shows
> on the site some time later. No PHP, no CGI, nada.
That's fine. What about cron jobs? For http://sserver.sf.net we have
the web source in cvs and every hour or so a cron job checks it out onto
the web server. We could use a similar technique to generate the html
from the macros in cvs and then place the generated html in the web cvs.
The idea being that updating a macro in the cvs would auto-magically
update the web page. How does that sound?
Cheers,
--
Tom Howard
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- Archive unification progress, Tom Howard, 2005/01/15
- Re: Archive unification progress, Peter Simons, 2005/01/16
- Re: Archive unification progress, Tom Howard, 2005/01/16
- Re: Archive unification progress, Peter Simons, 2005/01/17
- Re: Archive unification progress,
Tom Howard <=
- Re: Archive unification progress, Peter Simons, 2005/01/18
- Re: Archive unification progress, Stepan Kasal, 2005/01/18
- packages (was: Archive unification progress), Peter Simons, 2005/01/18
- Re: Archive unification progress, Tom Howard, 2005/01/18
- Re: Archive unification progress, Stepan Kasal, 2005/01/20
- Macro Packages (was: Archive unification progress), Tom Howard, 2005/01/20
- Re: Macro Packages (was: Archive unification progress), Stepan Kasal, 2005/01/21