Nicolas George wrote:
> she-seel ~ $ sudo apt-get install perforce  
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree       
> Reading state information... Done
> E: Couldn't find package perforce

Yes, this is slightly annoying, though it could be resolved - perhaps by
perforce co-ordinating with the folks who manage the repos (though I
imagine that if it's not there yet it's not going to be). It's not that it
can't be available but that at least in your case (I presume you did a
apt-cache search?) the repository maintainers chose not to have it.

I use freebsd for povray.org and the official perforce clients (command-
line and GUI), plus the perforce C API (their protocol is fully documented)
are available via pkg_add (similar concept to apt-get), in addition to a
number of useful (sometimes third-party) tools; e.g.:

  c4             A CVS-like Frontend to Perforce
  cvs2p4         CVS to Perforce Converter
  p4.el          Perforce-Emacs Integration|
  p4api          Perforce API (static libraries and header files)
  p4db           Perforce Browser
  p4delta        Summarizes and manages diffs between local files and p4
  p4genpatch     Helper scripts for generating RCS patches from Perforce
  p4v            Visual client for Perforce SCM
  p4-P4::Client  Perl extension for the Perforce API|
  p5-VCP         A tool for copying files between various SCM repositories
  py24-px        Perforce p4 wrapper and Python Perforce interface|
  ruby18-p4      Ruby interface to the Perforce API
  tkp4           Tcl/Tk frontends to Perforce's p4

See http://www.perforce.com/perforce/loadsupp.html for more info about the
tools offered by perforce. There's also a p4ftp server which I could
install; this allows access to the repo from standard FTP clients.

> The more obstacles you put to the access to the source code (and having
> to install yet another revision control client is an obstacle)

Perhaps, but not much of one: installing the p4 client is as simple as:

  wget http://www.perforce.com/downloads/perforce/r07.3/bin.linux26x86/p4

which is the linux 2.6 x86 client, ready to run.

If installing p4 is enough of an obstacle to discourage someone from
developing then they might not get far with the POV source: it's not easy
to make effective non-trivial changes to the raytracer.

That said, I understand that it would be better if we had a svn interface.
As mentioned, it's under consideration.

-- Chris

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