How do you manage large collections of unrelated Linux code and documentation?

[cdev]

How do you organize your code collections, to make it easier to go to stuff quickly, and get the best use out of it?

I have a huge collection of software, documentaion, etc. that is in various kinds of version control systems (mostly git) as well as tarballs in directories, PDF files, HTML documentation, etc. I'd like to know how other, far more organized people than me handle similar situations. Currently, I use git solely as a consumer and not as an author of software, but that may change in the future, But for now I just want to consolidate related files and make the documentation easier to read, possibly with the help of my desktop machines web server installation (just for the local machine) What I would really love is a tool that could walk a tree of literally hundreds of miscellaneous git directories, identify the ones that have updates and "git pull" them automatically, if desired (while leaving others alone)  Does such a tool exist?


I would say that 3/4 of the software I download never gets compiled, much of it I never even have time to look at, other stuff I do but never build it, or sometimes it fails to build on my machine because of some issue and I just put it aside for later.. Often they do build successfully and currently I either run them from the build directory and if it seems like something I want to install I use /usr/local or my home directory to install them.  Sometimes I need to use non-default libraries etc, so then I have to link against a local copy.

I find myself fantasizing about having two sparate machines and figuring out how to build and a good plan to instal stuff on one machine and using the newer machine only when I know how I'm going to do it. I shouldnt have to do that.

(ahh, I just answered my own question, I suppose one good answer is, package my builds using the Debian package manager, make debs out of packages I like, that would solve the problem, then I could also share them)

Also, how do you lay out folders, to mentally organize them?  I'm not going to die if I cant do this but I am also trying to make it easier for others to understand when I have somebody over and I am trying to show them something. Right now its embarassingly disorganized.

[MK14]

I find myself fantasizing about having two sparate machines and figuring out how to build and a good plan to instal stuff on one machine and using the newer machine only when I know how I'm going to do it. I shouldnt have to do that.

Use VMs, on your single machine, to make "new" computer (VM images). Which you can then customise to suit the make/compiling processes, and not need to worry about messing them up.
With little/no fear of damaging or infecting, your main computer.