Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!milton!oregon!mrt
From: MRT@oregon.uoregon.edu (Michelle R. Thibault)
Newsgroups: news.software.anu-news
Subject: ANU-NEWS Version Control
Message-ID: <12588@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Date: 19 Dec 89 23:27:10 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: University of Oregon
Lines: 41



In the interest of maintaining my sanity (and hopefully, that of others
on the network), I've been wondering if we could work on better version
control for ANU-NEWS.  

Geoff has been doing a *wonderful* job and is continually fixing any
problems that each of us run into, but it's a full time job just trying
to keep up with the patches from my end!!  I would really appreciate it 
if a major version could be tested and released as a complete package,
with any fixes (yes, I know there are *always* fixes) numbered in some
order so that the person maintaining News at a given site (me, for example!)
would be aware if they missed anything.  

A good example of version control is PMDF, maintained by Ned Freed. 
Each release is beta-tested before it's released (with new versions
approximately every six months) and then any patches after the actual
release are numbered according to which release they go with and which
patch they are.  For example, the latest version is 3.1 and patches for
that version are 3.1-1, 3.1-2, etc.  Ned posts these patches with the
patch number in the subject line so that everyone is aware that it is an
official patch that is actually going in the next release (as opposed to
a fix from someone else that isn't supported by the software).

I know that a lot of schemes have been discussed for distributing
patches and I'm not proposing that any of this change, just that it
would be nice for News to be more stable, without a new version
appearing every one to two months.  It seems that every time I get
around to installing a new version, three others have appeared after it,
and I can never find all the patches!! ;-)

Thanks for the time to read this and consider it.  I think that this
would greatly expand the use of ANU-NEWS and encourage more sites to
start using it.

Michelle 

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Michelle R. Thibault, Network Engineer (& grad student ;->)    (503)686-4394
Univ. of Oregon, Computing Center          mrt@oregon.uoregon.edu - INTERNET
Eugene, Oregon 97403                                     mrt@oregon - BITNET