Basic use of darcs
To get the current development version via DARCS, use: darcs get --partial http://kayalang.org/darcs/ --repo-name=kaya
Other DARCS commands that are useful are:
- darcs pull: update your local copy with recent changes made to the development version.
- darcs record: record changes you've made to your local version. If you've added entirely new files, use darcs add to add them to your local repository before recording the changes.
- darcs send: send changes you've recorded locally in for inclusion in the release. The email address to send patches to is ecb@compsoc.dur.ac.uk.
If you have problems with DARCS, or want to know more than the basic commands, read the DARCS manual.
Things to be aware of
The development version is obviously a continuously moving target and may at times contain major bugs. It is not recommended for using in any production environment, though we very much appreciate people who use it to test it and report any new bugs that are introduced. A few tips to make it easier:
- Always re-run autoconf and configure after pulling down a new set of patches, as some of the files that configure modifies for portability may have changed. Alternatively, use the -s option to darcs pull which will show which files have changed. Re-run autoconf and configure if
configure.acis altered, and re-run configure if any file ending with.inis altered. - If the patches you pulled in affect the compiler or run-time system (rts) directories, then you should probably do 'make klibclean' to ensure that all the standard library is built on the same basis. If it fails to compile, please try recompiling after 'make distclean' before reporting it.
- Always run 'make test' after significant rebuilds, and especially before submitting any patches.
Automated testing of the development version
The darcs repository includes a script 'autobuild.sh' which can be used to set up an automatic build test. The repository is currently tested nightly on the following machines, and all build failures are reported to the developers:
- 32-bit Linux, gcc 4.1 (Debian 4.0 i386)
- 32-bit Linux, gcc 4.3 (Debian unstable sparc64) - provided by Stu Teasdale
- 64-bit Linux, gcc 4.1 (Debian 4.0 amd64)
We would like to extend the range of automated test builds. If you have a suitable machine to run test builds on a regular schedule (especially one with a different operating system, GCC version and/or hardware architecture) and would like to help Kaya development in this way, then please get in touch.
