GitSuperRepo

(draft)

• Software built from many different components living in their own repositories

• End user must check out each component and compile them together into an executable which is then run to produce output

• End user is often also a developer of some of the components (public or private)

• GetComponents (URL) is a tool to simplify this process by collecting component repository information into a single "CRL" file (CRL = Component Retrieval Language).

• GetComponents allows you to check out the latest versions from a CRL file, or to update an existing set of checkouts to the latest version

Problems:

• Upstream projects use different version control systems (SVN, Git, Mercurial, ...) leading to a nonuniform experience for the end user/developer. Multiple tools must be learned for merging/branching etc.

• It is not easy to see at a glance exactly what version of the code is in use. One could iterate over all the different repositories, of different types, and print the revision information, and any local differences. This could be added to GetComponents, but we argue that this is the wrong solution to the problem.