Present Perfect

Another November, another Fedora. 16 came out, so it was time to update mach again.

And today I thought, is there any reason mach isn't 1.0 yet ? Am I going to do anything more to this piece of code before I want to call it that ?

And the answer is, no. It's the first Python application I've written, and I'm not particularly proud of the code, but I'm happy I've made good use of it for so long, and that it helped push packaging approaches forward and sparked ideas for the Fedora build system.

Since I didn't like the original code for mach2 (there was a version 1 which was Makefile-based), I started a rewrite with unit tests, better code layout, decent classes for abstracting distro-specific stuff, and so on.

The experience of how mock was created based off mach2 was a slightly sour one however, so I wasn't really motivated to finish the mach3 rewrite. Sometimes that's the drawback of open source - sure, forking is specifically allowed, so don't whine about it when it happens. But when it's done gratuitously, with no serious attempt at collaborating, it doesn't feel like it's in the spirit of open source.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. mach2 as it is today, is done. It really only needs updating for newer versions. As long as it works for me, it's unlikely I will continue mach3, but who knows?

Enjoy the release!

Another November, another Fedora. 16 came out, so it was time to update mach again. And today I thought, is there any reason mach isn't 1.0 yet ? Am I...