Re: Unifying ac-archive.sf.net and gnu.org (was: Macro Archive Relaunch)

[Guido Draheim]

Peter Simons schrieb:
>  (5) We leave everything as it is, and the GNU archive starts
>      downloading the contents from the SourceForge archive as well. (I
>      list this option for the sake of completeness. I do not want to
>      include submissions into the GNU archive unless they come from
>      the _author_ a.k.a. copyright holder of the macro.)

Well, it does really seem to be that (5) is only here for
completeness - I was just contacting you with a private
e-mail about ways to allow `upstream updates` so that you
could benefit directly from submissions that went into
the sfnet branch first. You did simply refuse to talk
about that person-to-person and pointed me back to the
mailinglist - I for one think that it is inappriate to
discuss technical details of how to copy macros from
one branch to the next.

The wording of (5) makes me believe that you are not
interested in symmetrical/cooperative relationship at
all. You are always free to pick anything from the
sfnet branch and use it for the benefit of the gnu
ac-archive - and I would like to help you in that as
well but it looks as if you choose to not accept that.

>  (4) We leave everything as it is, the SourceForge archive continues
>      to download the contents of the GNU archive, but clearly says so
>      on its web pages so that submitters are _aware_ of the
>      asymmetrical relationship between the two.

It had always been my intent to not split up completly,
and I was dissatisfied with the situation as present.
To put the maintaince on two shoulders would be the
best, and no submitter would need to wait weeks and
weeks for a reply. It seems however that such is not
an option for you, and the list of points glooming with
proposals to separate the projects stronger than they
have ever been. I do not think that it is in the best
interest of the autoconf world however.

>  (3) The macro repository (and I mean just the actual macros) are
>      maintained in the GNU archive, and the SourceForge archive goes
>      on to provide an alternate _presentation_ of them as well as an
>      alternative distribution of them. (This is, in my humble opinion,
>      how it should have been right from the beginning.)

That has been another question in the last e-mail to you,
how to go about classifications of macros - from past
experiences you do not handle macro submissions immediatly,
and it would be good have some status classification.
I do not want to limit that to just `non-gnu` or `experimental`
or some such, in fact I think that it should be some more
status levels - I am just not sure what model to take, as
examples it could be experimental, proposed, semi-standard,
or just alpha, beta, in-review. The ac_cxx_ macros are surely
in a state that they could even go into the main autoconf
distribtion but they are thought of to being a bit tooo
special for that.

(1)+(2)
I don't like to talk about (1) and (2) actually, you did slap
me multiple times asking for a `merger` and going to try to
maintain it _both_, sharing the workload where I could
concentrate one some parts while you'd do for another. It
does seem that a 'both' does not exist on your mind, even
that we do know both that there should really be only one
ac-archive, as that is what users expect it to be.

Still, I am ready to continue my presence on the autoconf
mailing list, pointing users to solutions from the ac-archive,
trying to handle extra macros on a daily basis, and proof
reading the m4 code to the best of my knowledge, just as it has
been in the last year with two ac-archive's being around. It
would have been better when such style would be present on
one ac-archive alone, as that is what users expect it to be.

-- cheers, guido
p.s. damn politics... we should concentrate on project work!