Hi Bruno and Erik,
I heard you are looking for a feedback on desirable features for GetComponents, so I have one feature to report that I actually don't like. I think the directory git-repos does break the logical organization of arrangements and thorns. It would be desirable to have all git-repos arrangements actually located in the arrangements directory.
We decided to not clone the git-repos directly into arrangements because we generally only want a subset of the files from any given git-repo. This keeps the clutter in the arrangements directory to a minimum, and it's worked well so far, but I'm open to moving things around a bit if it will simplify the resulting source tree.
Another logical way of organizing the arrangements would be to discriminate all of them by the type of repository their versions are controlled. Something as follows:
arrangements-cvs arrangements-git arrangements-svn arrangements-hg etc...
I'm not very keen on this layout, as it adds unnecessary directories. I'm not sure if it would cause issues with building Cactus, but that's something to consider.
I think we don't need the distinction between git-repos and hg-repos etc.; instead, there could be a single directory "repos" that contains all those repositories that don't fit into the arrangement structure. You could also place a README file into this directory, explaining in a few lines why this directory is there.
We want to hide the distinction between different repository types as much as possible.
I think this might be a good solution. It simplifies the layout of the source tree and keeps clutter out of arrangements.
Any other thoughts?
Eric