Re: getting patches organized

[Jason Molenda <crash at cygnus dot com>]

On Thu, Nov 18, 1999 at 12:55:47AM -0700, Tom Tromey wrote:

> Jimmy> - dependency or 'link' sections:
> Jimmy>   + dependency on a source code base (snapshot, release, cvs export
> Jimmy>     date, etc.)
> Jimmy>   + dependency and link to other patches
> Jimmy>   + link to a problem report, if applicable???


> These aren't done right now.  I'd like to see gnatsweb changed to
> recognize URLs in text it is displaying, but I don't know if/when this
> will happen.

MHonarc (the software I use to maintain the web archives of the mailing
lists) seems to use something like the following:

mhtxtplain.pl:$HUrlExp        = $Url . q%(?:&(?![gl]t;)|[^\s\(\)\|<>"'\&])+% .
mhtxtplain.pl:    $data =~ s@($HUrlExp)@<A $target HREF="$1">$1</A>@gio

I don't know perl, but that looks suspiciously like the necessary goo
to do the right thing.  Even if this isn't the right code, I'm sure
we can find it in mhonarc and present it to the gnatsweb maintainer
for inclusion.

> Jimmy> - the web interface with crossing referencing capability (e.g. for
> Jimmy>   patch dependencies, bug report) through URL, for easy traversal.

You can provide unique URLs to other Problem Reports in the database
via the gnatsweb user interface, so it can be done by hand.



BTW, one of the weaknesses (IMHO) of GNATS is how everything is stored
in a single text file with three or four sections.  It was written before
MIME existed (or at least became useful), so that was the way it was done.
I think it'd be much better to store all things that get appended to a PR
(e-mail messages, attachments, etc) in separate files and make GNATS'
e-mail message take advantage of MIME.  It would make sense to maintain
a single file with important standardized things (the PR headers, change
records), but everything else should be broken out into separate files,
maybe in a per-PR directory or something.

gnatsweb has a neat little thing to safely store arbitrary attachments
in a PR, and it works really well if you stay entirely within gnatsweb,
but this isn't the right way to go.  I'm convinced there is room for
improvement here.  I just need to find the time to make it happen. :-/


Jason
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