$Id: README.developer 677 2008-07-28 16:09:26Z peter $

Developer Information

This file contains developer specific information.

Coding style

Developers should follow the coding style outlined in the ​C++ coding guidelines.

Subversion usage

Commits should be minimalistic and the projects should always compile (make and make test) when someone makes a clean checkout. There is a short introduction to subversion and its usage available as ​Subversion guidelines. We follow these guidelines.

bootstrap

At first checkout from the repository, or when configure.ac is changed, you must run

./bootstrap

to setup autoconf files.

configure

Run the generated configure script with

./configure --enable-debug --enable-wctests

The option flag --enable-debug turns on debug options (e.g. enables assertions). The option flag --enable-wctests turns on some additional tests. All tests are not enabled by default since some of the tests depend on being run from a subversion WC.

Testing

Test programs should be created and added to the make check execution. Always check that the test runs before committing code to the repository, i.e., run make check.

There is a test repository in source:trunk/test/repo that is a part of the svndigest repository. The logic behind this is that it is nice to have a common test repository that can be used off-line. Changes to the repository are usually made to create new test cases and it is important that these changes are committed to svndigest repository as well. All changes to the test repository are not automatically propagated to the svndigest repository and it is important that some files created in the test repository are manually added to the svndigest repository. Assuming that make check is run before a commit, a warning is generated if the test repository is inconsistent with the svndigest repository. There will be a diagnostic message and a resolution hint, however the developer must examine and resolve the problem manually.

The problem is simply that the file source:trunk/test/repo/db/current​ is changed compared to the svndigest repository. The current file indicates a specific number of change sets within the test repository and the directories source:trunk/test/repo/db/revs and source:trunk/test/repo/db/revprops contains a matching number of change sets. However, the change sets added to the test repository are not automatically added to the svndigest repository, therefore the new files in the revs and revprops directories must be added manually to the svndigest repository.

There is also a race condition when developers make changes to the test repository simultaneously: It is easy to create severe conflicts in the test repository. Imaging the case when two developers adds test commits to the test repository, and then tries to add these to the svndigest repository. Since there are different versions of the same test repository revisions, the second developer committing to the svndigest will get messages about files being in the way. This is just one situation with possible conflicts. This conflict is of course resolved by the second developer having to throw away his changes and redo them after a new checkout of the test repository.

The take home message is that developers should communicate with each other when changing the test repository in order to avoid to large repository conflicts. AND read the output of make check.

Create a distribution

Create a distribution package with make dist. Remember to test the package with make distcheck. If required packages are installed in non-standard locations you need to pass this information to distcheck. This is done by using the variable DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS as

DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS="--with-apr=/usr/local/apr" make distcheck

Usually you need to set DISTCHECK_CONFIGURE_FLAGS to whatever options you pass to configure with the exception of --enable-wctests. Passing --enable-wctests to distcheck will always make the make to fail because a distribution does not contain all files needed for WC tests.

Releasing

See ​http://dev.thep.lu.se/svndigest/wiki/ReleaseProcedure

Copyright (C) 2005, 2006 Jari Häkkinen
Copyright (C) 2007 Jari Häkkinen, Peter Johansson
This file is part of svndigest, http://dev.thep.lu.se/svndigest
svndigest is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
svndigest is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307,
USA.