Re: [AD] de fourium pointium ohium

[Peter Wang <tjaden@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 10 Jul 2001, Angelo Mottola <a.mottola@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> One more thing: from what you say it is not clear if the ports to freeze
> include BeOS... IMHO the BeOS port is enough mature to be worth being
> included in the "officially supported" platforms, thus it should still be
> developed until the 4.0 release.

I agree.  I wouldn't mind the other ports still being developed in
the meantime though.  But once 4.0 is release, the unsupported ports
will have to be developed in the "unstable" branch (e.g. 4.1.x).

> I can help you if you point me to the right direction, i.e. if you tell me
> the exact steps required in generating a WIP.

First, try compiling on as many platforms as possible.  I compile
under linux, mingw, djgpp (though I forgot this time), QNX and BeOS.
(It's not fun.)

Next, you have to update the docs/changes._tx and docs/thanks._tx
files.  I do this by running the script I got from here:

    http://www.red-bean.com/cvs2cl/ 

and then sifting through the entries and rewriting the descriptions.
Then I follow (roughly) what I wrote in here:

    http://www.alphalink.com.au/~tjaden/dev/3934release.txt

If everything works right the first time, feel lucky :-)
Some advice: don't rush anything, or it'll take a lot longer.

> > Binaries:
> >
> > We need to write something like a test suite to check if one release
> > is binarily backwards compatible with a previous one.
> 
> Humm, this sounds a bit confusing to me... Can you explain better? How
> should we do this "binary compatibility" test program?

When we make a release, we should compile and dynamically link one
or more test programs, so that when it's time to make another
release, we can test the new release against the old test program.
As Eric said, we've already got plenty of examples and tests, so
they're probably good enough.

-- 
STRUMBLE (STRUM bul), n.  That visible object you always pretend made you
trip, when it was actually your own stupid clumsiness.
	-- Rich Hall, "Sniglets"