[Gambas-user] include/exclude lists for executables, source archives and (autotools) packages

[Benoît Minisini]

Le 19/01/2014 04:20, Bruce a écrit :
> Some comments and questions and requests.
>
> 1) the gambasdoc "Project Directory Structure" page
> ( http://gambasdoc.org/help/doc/project_structure?v3 ) says that
> a) "Other files and directories" i.e. the Data folder are not included
> in the executable. Surely this cannot be right?

It is not. They are included of course.

> b) "[.hidden] stuff are not included in the executables.  Inadvertently,
> a few weeks ago I created a symbolic link in the Data folder of a
> utility project to a file in the hidden folder. This project is (so far)
> only on my PC. What I am wondering is did the archiver include the
> symbolic link or did it snap it?

The archiver cannot store symbolic links, so I think it will store a 
copy of the file. By doing that, you are killing the goal of the 
".hidden" directory.

>
> 2) On the packaging tab of the Preferences popup, there is that list of
> files that are ignored when creating source archives. I have never
> really paid too much attention to it but now I am wondering what the
> entries in this list mean. We have a long list of "documentation" and
> modelling files in .hidden that are very often temporary in nature and
> can be very large. Is there a way to exclude entire directories from the
> archives?

No, but everything in ".hidden" is not included in the archive, so I 
don't see the problem.

> For example, we have a Modellio workspace in .hidden/Design/ that could
> and usually does contain a bunch of subdirs of metadata built by the
> Modellio tool with stuff in them that does not need to be archived as it
> is rebuilt everytime the Modellio tool is loaded. I would like to
> exclude these specific paths from archives (they are dozens of Mbytes)
>
> Another example is our code generators leave a lot of "temporary"
> metadata files and sqlite files here and there in .hidden. These are
> useful to keep in the live copy as we frequently dive in and out of the
> tools. But when the project is archived these files are all generally
> rendered useless.  Again I'd just like to exclude these files from the
> archives.
>
> Why do I want to keep all this stuff inside the project?  Even with a
> team of three and two "major" products to support, we created a
> documentation nightmare. The projects are on a shared network drive, the
> documentation and models were wherever and there were multiple copies
> and variants of everything.  It has taken us almost two months to clean
> up the horse auctions docos and move it all into the gambas project
> directories. This is a "good" thing. But at the moment we are creating
> source archives that are approaching the limits of a DVD and need to
> slim them down. We are docing this manually at the moment and that is
> NOT a good thing.
>
> If there is not a way to exclude specific paths then fine, we will have
> to come up with an answer here.
>
> 3) Packages and I am only talking about autotool packing here again.
> I thought somewhere there was a way to exclude and include specific
> directories in the package archives.  By "somewhere" I mean that I am
> not sure whether it was in Gambas or in something I wrote myself back in
> the Gambas2 days or even somewhere else, so this is really a "please
> help if you can" request. Given the above, there is a lot of stuff we
> are now keeping in the .hidden directory that should or should not go in
> the package. Can you think of a way I could achieve this?
>
> Paddys-Hill is (hopefully) going to expand shortly with, for us, a very
> large project. It is a bespoke development but the customer seems quite
> happy to have it released under GPL (as long as they get what they
> want). I am currently in a bit of a panic as I haven't had to cope with
> a team of 15'ish for some years, hence these and no doubt other weird
> questions that will arise shortly.
>
> Thanks in advance for any input you can provide.
>
> best regards
> Bruce
>

Project files that won't go into the executable must be stored in the 
Project (i.e. '.hidden') directory.

Project files that will go into the executable are stored in the Data 
directory (every other non-hidden directories).

...except the files matching the patterns referenced in the Preferences 
dialog.

Regards,

-- 
Benoît Minisini