From owner-ctm-users@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jun 17 17:59:46 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ctm-users@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 45E8E37B401 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:59:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from sccimhc02.asp.att.net (sccimhc02.asp.att.net [63.240.76.164]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 949E143F93 for ; Tue, 17 Jun 2003 17:59:45 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from stephen@math.missouri.edu) Received: from math.missouri.edu (12-216-242-20.client.mchsi.com[12.216.242.20]) by sccimhc02.asp.att.net (sccimhc02) with SMTP id <20030618005944im200ae94oe>; Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:59:44 +0000 Message-ID: <3EEFB980.8050805@math.missouri.edu> Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 19:59:44 -0500 From: Stephen Montgomery-Smith User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3.1) Gecko/20030616 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Mark Murray References: <200306172210.h5HMARHh004335@grimreaper.grondar.org> In-Reply-To: <200306172210.h5HMARHh004335@grimreaper.grondar.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: ctm-users@freebsd.org Subject: Re: CTM - any users left? X-BeenThere: ctm-users@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: CTM User discussions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 18 Jun 2003 00:59:46 -0000 Mark Murray wrote: > Stephen Montgomery-Smith writes: > > > > CTM was quite a clever hack at the time it was conceived, but it never > really made it out of "hack" status. The CTM builder is as fragile as > hell (I did the job myself a few years ago), and is incredibly resource > hungry. It buys its owner very little, and its returns are really only > in the goodwill department. If it is really useful, it really needs > someone to own it from the builder downwards, and it needs a strong > update to bring it into the 21st century. > I don't think ctm is so fragile. I have been maintaining it now for a few years, and it has survived a couple of disk crashes and such like. One place it might be considered fragile from the end user point of view is that if he/she makes any change to the source code, that future CTM applications will fail when they try to update in the same place. I will agree that it is resource hungry. It might be worth rethinking how mkctm works. It first uses cvsup and cvs to update its own copies of the sources, so maybe it could cleverly use the outputs from these programs to limit which parts of the sources need updating. (The other possibility is to wait another five years, then the computers will handle it in no time at all.) Anyway, right now I don't really have the time to invest in making these fixes. -- Stephen Montgomery-Smith stephen@math.missouri.edu http://www.math.missouri.edu/~stephen