Differences between "msrt" and "install_minossoft".

Msrt is essentially a drop in replacement for the older method of:

1. getting a tar file for a "boot" release,
2. using install_srt to boot strap SRT
3. then using install_minossoft script in conjunction with the setup_minossoft scripts for updating and building the code.

In addition to creating releases from scratch, msrt can be used on releases that were created by this older method. It makes use of the same setup_minossoft information. However, because msrt uses the standard SRT tools to do much of the work it will add any new packages to a release in a slightly different way.

To understand this, a quick outline of how SRT manages releases:

• SRT has the concept of named releases of a set of source code packages.
• A package is a directory of source code in CVS at a particular version, associated with a CVS tag.
• The actual release is made by filling a directory: $SRT_DIST/releases/<release-name>/ with symlinks named after the package and pointing to where the checked out packages reside, which is: $SRT_DIST/packages/<package-name>/<cvs-version-tag>/
• Creation of a new release is done with SRT's newrel. Using this, zero or more packages along with their CVS version tags can be specified.
• Addition of a package to a release is done with SRT's addpkg.
• Removal of a package from a release is done with SRT's rmpkg.

This differs from how install_minossoft created the "development" releases. Instead of using newrel and/or addpkg it would call CVS directly and explictly check out the package source into a directory named like: packages/<package-name>/development/. instead of packages/<package-name>/<cvs-version-tag>/

This difference should not effect someone migrating from install_minossoft to msrt. The reason for this is that once the $SRT_DIST/releases/development/ directory has been initialized with its symlinks, further maintenance is blind to what those symlinks actually are. Subsequent msrt update, msrt build, msrt clean, etc, usage should just work.

However, when using msrt update after a new package is added to the packages-development file, the correct SRT schema will be followed. This may make it impossible to return to using install_minossoft.

msrt allows for comments and blank lines in the SRT_DIST/setup/packages-<release-name> files. If you make use of this feature these files will no longer work with install_minossoft (as currently written).

msrt doesn't force you to have all the SRT environment variables defined in order to update and build the software. It only relies on SRT_DIST and internally calls its own version of srt_setup. However, as a convenience, the default template setup script does invoke srt_setup as this is needed to actually run the resulting programs (ie, loon). Futher, if you want to explicitly type make instead of msrt build you need this environment intact.