Clean up mirror repos

[mattwynne]

When we first moved to the monorepo, many of the package managers we used needed a library to be in its own repo, so we set up individual read-only mirror repos which are copied to when there are changes in this repo.

The context has changed, and we don't need them any more. The represent a significant amount of complexity, and things will be simpler if we can do away with them.

• Change go modules to use VCS module paths into common repo (Use VCS module paths in Go reference from Gherkin => Messages #1608)
• Update godog to use VCS module paths too (Update cucumber/common module references to use paths instead of subrepos godog#389)
• Deal with cucumber.ml
• remove scripts for generating / updating submodules
• remove /bin/linux/amd64/splitsh-lite
• archive the go sub-repos (legacy versions will still need them, I think)
• delete or move other sub-repos to cucumber-attic
• remove docs about subrepos
• relative paths instead of rsync and delete rsync scripts/functions

[mattwynne]

@jaysonesmith or anyone else from @cucumber/go can you help me understand whether we still need the subrepos for publishing common go modules?

[aurelien-reeves]

We can easily specify a go module which is in a monorepo:
https://golang.org/ref/mod#module-path
https://golang.org/ref/mod#vcs-dir
So in our case, that should be as simple as something like the following: github.com/cucumber/common/messages/go/v42

[ciaranmcnulty]

Would be great if this eliminates the rsync'ing

[aslakhellesoy]

I disagree with use symlinks instead of rsync and delete rsync scripts/functions - symlinks work poorly in git.

We may be able to replace some of the copied files with relative file paths within the repo, but we might not be able to do it for all rsync'ed files.

For example, I think .mocharc.json files must be in the same directory as package.json - there might be more cases like that.

[ciaranmcnulty]

symlinks work poorly in git

Is that a Windows issue?

[aslakhellesoy]

I thought it was a Windows issue (used to be at least), but have no simple way of verifying if it works now. Maybe it does now: https://github.community/t/windows-symlinks-do-they-play-well-with-git-projects/730

If symlinks work on Windows too, it would certainly simplify things!

[ciaranmcnulty]

I have similar vague memories :)

I think under WSL2 it's fine but no idea how it works on 'real' Windows nowadays

[ciaranmcnulty]

If we don't have separate repos in future though I agree that we should minimise the use of symlinks in favour of relative paths

[mattwynne]

@gasparnagy @aurelien-reeves @enkessler can you add anything about the symlinks situation on Windows these days?

[gasparnagy]

@mattwynne I did a quick check. you can create symlinks, but only with admin privileges. so with normal console where you would do a git pull it does not work.

How does git support symlinks? Could anyone point me to a git repo that had symlinks inside - i would try to see what happens if i pull...

btw the win command for creating symlinks is

mklink symlink-file target-file

[gasparnagy]

It seems you can enable creating symlinks without admin, but it requires you to enable developer mode (i don't have that enabled... and never heard about it yet). Unfortunately developer mode enables a bunch of other things, like SSH server, that you might not want to have on a laptop for example...
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/get-started/enable-your-device-for-development

[mattwynne]

@gasparnagy try https://github.com/mattwynne/symlink-test ?

[mattwynne]

You should be able to do:

> type link-to-readme.md
# symlink-test

[aurelien-reeves]

have separate repos in future though I agree that we should minimise the use of symlinks i

I agree.
Why to use symlinks where relative path may be enough?

Symlinks may still be confusing sometimes when relative path are explicit anyway.

[gasparnagy]

@gasparnagy try https://github.com/mattwynne/symlink-test ?

Does not work. Git clone just clones it as normal file that contains the name of the linked file... :(

> type link-to-readme.md
README.md

So I think we can say that we should not use symlinks if we want to have contributors with Windows...

[mattwynne]

Why to use symlinks where relative path may be enough?

Of course! I hadn't thought of that. Relative paths should work just fine.