[Stellar-discuss] f95 + c + Ruby = okay on Mac. But what about linux?

[Piet Hut]

Hi Bill (yes, I'm here!)

You beat me to it; I was just about to wonder what happened during the last
three days after Bill's Big Bang.  Perhaps everyone is quietly migrating?

Just one point from a previous email that you sent, in response to Ross:

> > Bill, about the organisation of this project, I assume you will be
> > starting on this by your self at first and at some point convert it
> > to an open source project that everyone can easily contribute to?
> 
> Frank Timmes and I have been batting this idea around for awhile now,  
> and I certainly hope he will continue to devote a chunk of his time  
> to making it real.  Both Frank and I believe in putting things out  
> there on the web for anyone to grab and play with (if you haven't  
> visited his website, you should take a look -- http:// 
> www.cococubed.com/code_pages/codes.shtml).
> 
> That said, let me make it clear that I'm not interested in (or  
> particularly skilled at) organizing and managing a project.  I have  
> enough trouble keeping my own desk straight, let alone a multi- 
> person, open source project, even with all the modern tools like  
> CVS.  Just to show what a troglodyte I am, I don't even know how to  
> use CVS and don't want to learn!  (Which is not to say that I may not  
> HAVE to learn at some point just to keep playing in this game.)

For this to become a group project, by definition Bill should not have
to be the person managing the source code version system.  Just like
Ross was kind (and able) enough to quickly set up this email list, so
someone else could easily set up such a system.

Instead of CVS, I would strongly suggest to use svn, short for subversion:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/svnbook/book.html -- same idea, but more than
a decade younger, and without many of the ennoying limitations of CVS (e.g.
you can move files, even directories; a big deal for those who know CVS ;>).
Jun and I have been very happy users of svn for the last two years.

So if someone will set up an svn repository, that will be most of the work.
Anyone can then learn quickly to use it.  On an everyday basis, you really
use only two commands: "svn commit" will send copies of all that you've
done recently to the central repositary, while prompting you for a short
description of what it is you did (one-liner okay), and "svn update" will
bring everyone else's contributions to your local computer.  Give both
commands once each day that you're working, and that's it.  Bill, you
will not have a serious chance to object that this is too difficult ;>).

Cheers,

Piet