Redistributing Guile contributions

[Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj at mdj dot nada dot kth dot se>]

Hi,

Last night I realized that we are extremely close to having a
fantastically simple redistribution system for Guile contributions.

Just before sleep I was lying counting hackers coming to rescue Guile
out of the mudhole.  I thought that I've probably forgotten to respond
to that Russian guy who contributed the find-top-of-stack patch, and
hoped that someone else hadn't forgotten it.  Then I thought how nice
it would be if Victor could himself install his patch in a patch
repository.  Then the fantasy run away with me totally.

I even thought up our own SRFI process, but automatically managed, so
that anyone with an idea of a feature Guile should have could
contribute it to this repository, which the Guile developers or other
volunteers could have a look at once in a while.

Then I realized that counting hackers is not as good as counting
sheep, because I was totally awake.

I thought about the easiest way to realize such a repository.  "I
wonder if I can get the system guys at the department to give me a big
harddrive to host it" and so on...

But then I realized that the best repository for Guile contributions
probably is the internet.  (I know that this isn't new ideas.  You
have probably described it to me already.  I'm just telling you the
train of thoughts.)

*We already have a process which can support such a repository.*

We could just make small adjustments to the Guile projects list.  The
Guile projects list in essence *is* a repository for contributions.

The only thing which is missing before it can be put to serious use as
the Guile library is a hierarchical structure.

The simplest solution would be to let people add new subdirectories as
they wish.  (We can always fix it afterwards.)  One field could simply
be a path among webpages.  If the components of that path doesn't
already exist, it is created.  Note that I'm not talking about real
directories, but only relationships between pages.

Just to be clear: This repository would not contain any files.  It
would only contain pointers out into the net.  Later, we could add a
mechanism for checking links and removing them if they have died.

Can you make the necessary adjustments?

/mdj