Glossary
This page contains explanations of the terms in the context subpatch. The terms are not sorted alphabetically. They are sorted according to relevance. More important terms are at the top, less important terms are at the bottom.
multi repository management/setup/problem
The multi repository problem is when your project consists of multiple repositories and there are interdependencies between these repositories. E.g. when you must checkout multiple repos, because your build spans across multiple
On this website the problem is sometimes called multi repository setup. The process of handling such a project is called multi repository management.
superproject
The superproject is the parent project in a multi repository setup. It's often
a git repository itself, e.g. for git submodule. When using subpatch the
superproject has the configuration file .subpatch at its top level directory.
subproject(s)
The subproject or subprojects are the external projects, often called (third party) dependencies, that are added to the superproject.
Note: The terms super- and sub-projects are always relative to a specific project setup. It might be the case that the superproject of a project (e.g. a C library with third party dependencies) is the subproject of another project (e.g. a C++ application, using the library).
Naming in different contexts
The terms superproject/subproject and project/dependency are specific to a given context, but can be used interchangeably. Here is an overview:
| Context | Name for super… | Name for sub… |
|---|---|---|
| package manager | project/package | (source) dependencies |
| multi repo problem | superproject | subprojects |
| multi repo problem | super repository | sub repositories |
| multi repo problem | superrepo | subrepos |
version control system (vcs)
A version control system is a tool to track changes to a set of files and provides auxiliary functional. Sometimes these are also called source code management tools.
Popular version control systems are
The older name for vcs is rcs (revision control system). And yet another (current) name is scm (source control management). Then name is used on the git website.
application-level package manager (APM)
The term application-level pakcage managers (APM) is used to described package managers provided in the ecosystem of the programming language. Examples:
See also the Wikipedia entry Application-level package managers. These APMs are in contrast to package managers of Linux distributions, like rpm and dpkg, and embedded build systems, like buildroot and Yocto.