Everyone,
The two most important parts of the 5.9.0 release will be the new build
system and the moving/renaming of files. The former is basically
complete. I have run into a snag with the latter, however. I could
really use some help.
My problem is with the shared code. Right now it exists in the
directories share, share1, share2, sharem, sym and tensor. (Is there any
I missed?) The distinction between the shareX directories is arbitrary
as far as I can tell. I count no less than 62 different file extensions
in them. I sat down to attempt to standardize the file extensions
according to the proposal Vadim made quite a while ago:
> It is good idea to standardize this better
> and reduce the number of file extensions to, say,
> .mac .lisp .usg .mac .dem.
When I looked closer I found that this is a highly nontrivial task. Even
within the 62 file extensions, the usage is not consistent. For example
some .mc files are maxima batch files (which I would rename to .mac) and
some are lisp files (which I would rename to .lisp). Clearly, it is
going to be a big job to sort these out.
Here are the points on which I need help:
1) Someone needs to go through and figure out a mapping from the old
file names to new file names with consistent endings. It will be
tedious.
2) Unless someone has a better suggestion, I would propose to put
combine all the share-like directories in to one directory called
"share". "sym" and "tensor" would become subdirectories of "share". I'm
not terribly happy about this, but I don't have a better idea. Please
either come up with a better idea, or convince me that this idea is good
enough.
3) I have no idea what fraction of the packages in the share directories
are working, used, or even useful. Any input in this would be
appreciated.
Really, any help on the share file problem will be appreciated.
--Jim
P.S. I'm about to go out of email contact for about a week and a half.
I'll try to at least look at the email archives in my absence.
P.P.S. I have the testing suite incorporated into the new build system.
Nearly all tests were working until the minute I was about to commit
them. (Shoot me now.) I will commit them after I return.