[upforgrabs] tools/update

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:ist957$19nj$1 at digitalmars.com...
> We need a script to update all of dmd's paraphernalia. By this I'm putting 
> the task up for grabs and am describing it.
>
> The script would require git to be installed, and would orchestrate git 
> commands to freshen the installation. Either a tag can be given, or the 
> script would automatically detect the latest "semistable" release, or even 
> the script can be told to get the latest and greatest. The exact tagging 
> convention is to be defined later.
>
> The trick with such tools is they must "just work". That means wherever 
> and however you installed dmd, the script should be able to detect 
> everything it needs for a successful update. This means: dmd and rdmd 
> binary locations, druntime and phobos library locations, and druntime and 
> phobos import locations.
>

I've already been planning to add the features of "recompile DMD" and "check 
out DMD from git and compile it" to DVM (unless Jacob plans to beat me to 
it). You do have good suggestions on some of the implementation details. If 
there's still another feature in your proposal that I've overlooked here, 
let me know.

I was going to wait to do this until Jacob merged in my Windows pull request 
(he said he'd get to it end of next week, IIRC), because I want to base it 
off a DVM that already has Windows support, but maybe I shouldn't wait and 
should just fork my "windows fork" and get to it? (I'm still fairly new to 
DVCS and "proper DVCS procedures".)

DVM is written in D1/Tango, though. Would that be a problem? If so, and if 
Jacob doesn't have any objections to it being ported to D2/Phobos, then I'd 
volunteer to do the port. I already have experience porting a bunch of my 
own code from D1/Tango to D2/Phobos. But I don't want to be hasty about 
porting it: I assume Jacob had a reason for using D1/Tango. I don't know how 
important the reason was.