git-cola, jsonpickle, simplejson, and packaging
David Aguilar
Right now it's less than ideal that git-cola's "make install"
target installs a private copy of simplejson and jsonpickle.
We never install it globally -- it's always installed into a
private /usr/share/git-cola/lib directory where it will only
be found by git-cola.
Nonetheless, this is unnecessary when the system's package
manager has already taken care of installing simplejson and
jsonpickle on its own.
As of the (yet unreleased) 1.4.1.2 release, the git-cola
build scripts support a "standalone" make variable and
corresponding --standalone setup.py option.
e.g.:
make prefix=/usr standalone=1 install
When this variable is defined then we avoid installing
the private 'simplejson' and 'jsonpickle' modules.
I didn't make standalone the default since not all
distributions have both jsonpickle and simplejson
available as packages (yet).
Since git-cola won't function without them I figured that
suppressing their installation should be an opt-in.
I'll still be keeping a copy of jsonpickle and simplejson
in the git-cola git repo and source tarballs since we need
to ensure that "make install" works outside of git.
Since most people get cola from their distribution then
this shouldn't be a problem.
There's another packaging topic that I wanted to mention.
I noticed that the debian packages are setup to watch:
http://cola.tuxfamily.org/releases/cola-(.*)-src\.tar\.gz
That pattern is a holdout from the days when we had
"source" and "release" tarballs. We don't do that anymore,
so I was planning on dropping the "-src" suffix so that
it'd be simply:
http://cola.tuxfamily.org/releases/cola-(.*)\.tar\.gz
What's the best timeframe for making this change?
Should I leave the existing tarballs as-is, or will having a
mix of patterns in the same directory confuse the debian
tarball watcher? If it'll confuse it then I can also go
and rename the old tarballs to follow the new pattern.
1.4.1.2 will be released very soon now so if you guys could let
me know whether I should hold back on doing this until a later
release just let me know.
There's no deadline for the naming convention change so I'm
planning on holding off on it until it's most convenient for
you guys.
Thanks for all your help!
--
David