[Gnu-arch-users] beginner needs advice

[wandre . l]

Hello,

(beware, that mail is a bit long)
I use a source based distribution, which repositories are
managed by perforce. I'd like first to make a copy of
these with tla, and why not, make tla to replace it.
Here is the situation:
There are two main projects: sorcery and grimoires.
Sorcery are the tools making the core of the distribution,
and three branches exist: devel, test and stable.
grimoires use the same scheme and are organized like that:
(there are several grimoires, general, games, z-rejected etc)
branch->section->spell
branch can be devel, test or stable.
section can be: windowmanagers, kernel, etc.
branch, section are directories.
spell is a directory (name of the program) which contains
a couple files used by sorcery so it can download, install
etc the software program.
How all this is managed right now:
sorcery hackers can access everything in sorcery branch.
the usual way is devel branched to test and test to stable.
Sometimes fixes from stable or test must go the other way.
Grimoires work almost like this: the only thing is that:
there are general gurus, that access the whole grimoire (whatever branch
it is). There are section gurus, that can only access their section(s)
to make change. As usual, a fix in stable may go to test and devel.
devel grimoire is a bit particular: some spells may have a file inside
their directory, called "WIP". In that case, branching to test shall not
take care of such spells. So, test is exactly the same as devel,
but WIP spell. test to stable branching is taken care of by a given guru.
Each six hours, tarballs of: devel & test sorcery, and devel & test
grimoires are automatically generated. stable sorcery and grimoire
tarballs are generated when it needs to by a guru.
Each commit (grimoire and sorcery) send mail to gurus, with changelog
and diff.

Now come questions :)
Is configuration management the right solution to manage such a thing ?
Should each section of a grimoire be a sub-project ?
Development, as you must have understand, is centralized, even if
gurus have their own local repository (of their section, the whole
grimoire or sorcery according to their job). What would be the way to manage
rights and all for r/w access cleanly ? (meaning adding or removing someone,
modifying his rights is not a pain)
Currently, gurus have to make by themselves spell commit into devel,
and then integrate that change to test. How would you do that
automatically ? Use of commit hook to tag the changed spell (usually a guru
makes a change in a spell, then commit) ?
I must admit i'm a bit lost when it comes to organize such a thing with
with tla. I use it regularly with very small projects, not something that big.
Any advice is welcome.
Kind regards,
Laurent.
<to be continued...>