On 9/7/06, Bob Apthorpe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't know of any other language that has a SCM system as a > dependency. For configuration management purposes, you really need a way > of tracking what revision is installed where - pulling untagged releases > from SVN/CVS/whatever is a really bad idea in some environments.
... hence why at least the Engines plugin comes with a stable set of tags, which I *heartily* recommend that every production site which uses engines use. Stability is key, people. > I'm playing devil's (or John's) advocate here; while I like the option > of retrieving code via SVN, it still feels risky, like I'm using > bleeding-edge code rather than something tested and approved for release > even if that's not the case. I'm leery of using SVN as the primary or > sole release mechanism. The reason why SVN is the 'primary release mechanism' for plugins is because it is the *only* release mechanism. The current script/plugin tool will ONLY download from SVN repositories. How risky or otherwise each particular repository's maintainer, but in general a tagged release is never modified once created. Anyway - there is work afoot to retool script/plugin as we speak (see posts on interblah.net and lukeredpath.co.uk), so in theory there's no reason why other SCM systems couldn't be supported. Even with support for Darcs (or anything else), you're just introducing a dependency on having those tools, plus SVN, for people who would want to download plugins. SVN is the lowest common denominator, so everyone uses it because they can be reasonably sure that if they aren't using it, they don't particularly mind installing it. Rails uses SVN, too. As for releasing tarballs, that puts additional workload on the developer, and we're all lazy, aren't we :) -- * J * ~ _______________________________________________ engine-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rails-engines.org/listinfo.cgi/engine-users-rails-engines.org
