[isabelle-dev] Future and maintainance of ~isabelle/contrib_devel at TUM NFS

[Florian Haftmann]

Hi all,

concerning this matter Alex and I had a conversation, and here a short
summary of the main points.

The questions are:
1. How to provide developers »out there« with components?
2. How to deal with the fact that the area of platform-neutral
components is over?
3. How to ensure that different developers need not to invent the wheel
over and over?

Concerning 1., the basic infrastructure is already there (cf.
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.mathematics.logic.isabelle.devel/2166)

* store components as tarball in nfsbroy:/home/isabelle/public_components
* download from http://isabelle.in.tum.de/devel/components/

We have just to agree to maintain it more seriously.  Additional
infrastructure (e.g. a wget script) can emerge over time.

Concerning 2.
* The time of symlinks is over.
* Instead, there is a dedicated file (currently
Admin/contributed_components) thanks to mira

So far the basics.  However, also the time of platform-universal
components is gone.  Let me quote Alex:

> a) Subdirectories for each platform
> 
>   /home/isabelle/contrib/
>     x86-linux/
>     x86_64-linux/
>     x86-cygwin/
>     ...
> 
>   Then, the universal component packages must be copied, symlinked or
>   hardlinked.
> 
> b) Different packages for different platforms, roughly as it is now...
> 
>   /home/isabelle/contrib/
>     jdk-6u31_x86_64-linux/
>     jdk-6u31_x86-linux/
> 
>   Then we need a /Admin/contributed_components file for each
>   platform, which lists the components relevant for that platform. 

I would prefer both indeed:
a) architecture-sensitive organisation, but with universal components
directly under contrib (as is the case now)
b) separate component files for different platforms

So far the fundamentals.  (3) is a softer issue which can be discussed
in a separate mail and is not so essential to start with.

	Florian

-- 

PGP available:
http://home.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/haftmann/pgp/florian_haftmann_at_informatik_tu_muenchen_de

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