[arachne] Re: sources

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

Ray Andrews wrote:

Arachne at FreeLists---The Arachne Fan Club!

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:53:58 -0500, Jason and Ornumar Dodd wrote:

Jason,


I'm still baffled.  So what if the differences are so great?  This there
something magical in the c world that I don't get?  If the whole blasted
paragraph is different, you'll just get the old paragraph commented out
and then the new one.  This isn't a new concept.  Sure, there are


People are just not getting the point. I'll say it one more time then
I give up. There are few places where simply replacing one snip
of code with another snip of code will work due to the fact that
global changes have been made. It would take two steps at the least,
let's take one line:

  arachne.framescount = 5 - 3 - 1 + 1 - 2; // Just kidding ....

now we comment that out and replace with my version:

  A.framescount = 0;

but it won't work, there is no 'A' in the old sources, so we must edit:

  arachne.framescount = 0;

So, to patch the old code, by the time it was completed, we would
have the entire old code plus the 'raw' import of mine, and the edited
version of mine all in the same src package which would make it about
3 MB long and it would take five years. If anyone wants to do that
they are welcome, but not me. Why do everything twice?

Now, Jason, there was a time when what you suggest would have worked.
When I started, my BASE1 was *just* an edit for style and formating,
the .exe was identical to that produced by the old sources. At that stage, one could indeed just comment out the old and paste in the new. 
But that will no longer work due to global changes.
So it is about the comments! The extra size of the source code due to comments shouldn't matter unless the project decides it's time to purge old commented out code. It's the binary that counts. I find it interesting in your 'example' that the old source had arachne.framescount and the new is A.framescount. I hope you don't consider replacing the variable name with initials to be better code.
And the reason you quote for this not working is exactly the desired result for change management in every project I've ever been involved with.
There are tools to help in this regard. No matter how different the code is you could merge it back in. Seems a lost cause for this particular case. Anyway, I'm in the camp that likes to purge commented out stuff after a couple releases anyway. Just seems silly to me when there are arguments over the issue. For future projects you decide to 'rewrite' but think you'll later want to merge with, you should consider this approach :)
Finally, if you feel your code is so different, better, and impossible to merge with the main, the it makes no sense to claim you want to merge. 

Regards,


Ray Andrews
-- Arachne;A1b,x9
Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --
Arachne at FreeLists -- Arachne, The Premier GPL Web Browser/Suite for DOS --

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