[petsc-dev] Fwd: [petsc-maint #119133] petsc-dev configure crash

[Barry Smith]

On Jun 6, 2012, at 2:52 PM, Jed Brown wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Barry Smith <bsmith at mcs.anl.gov> wrote:
> > A) make buildsystem a subrepo (svn external for those familiar with svn)
> 
>   There have already been many discussions on petsc-dev about how hg subrepos suck and don't satisfy all our needs.
> 
> I think "our needs" are mostly wrong in this case. ;-)
> 
> Specifically, I think it is a long-running bug that the petsc-dev repository does not record when a BuildSystem change is needed. The implicitly synchronized or fragile "compare dates on the commit" model is bad.

   Totally agree. The only question is wether subrepos (or any other mechanism) solves the problem well. I'd don't want to switch to another model that has just as many flaws.

> 
> Anyway, I thought the real concerns were that old versions of Hg didn't manage subrepos consistently, not that the general model was wrong.

   It was much more than that.

   BTW: to deal with that, is it possible to mark a repository so it refuses to work with old hg installs? If so then we would just mark petsc-dev and any issues related to using outdated hg would not be a problem.

   Barry