[Fcp-general] There's some stuff in CVS

[Peter Hutnick]

Hello all.

I've done some stuff, and the discussion is necessarily technical.  If
none of what follows means anything to you it doesn't mean you're in the
wrong place!  If all this technical stuff turns you off, by all means,
start a non-technical discussion ;-)

I have added a book called "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist" to
CVS.  I have also added a DOCS directory.  It contains a proposed course
numbering system.  Have a look and let me know what you think.

Using this book has created a defacto standard of LaTeX "sources" that
"build" to PDF or PS.  How does everyone feel about that?

I think that the direction I want to go for a "build" system is a set of
recursive Makefiles and an optional configuration file.  This is pretty
technical, but we could offer "pre-built" CDs and downloadable files in
our file releases section of the page.

An initial idea of this build system can be seen in the course (10470). 
The book is built by a Makefile that is kicked off by a Makefile in the
10470 directory (the root of the course).  There could be other
directories with tests or something that could also be built by this
"parent" Makefile.

Eventually there would be a Makefile in the root of the project.

If someone wanted to build a "standard release" they could do "make pdf"
(or just "make"?) from the root of a CVS checkout.  This might generate a
directory (or an ISO?) of directories of PDF files for each of the
courses.

How does that sit with everyone?

-Peter