Subject: Re: Further development

From: [email-masked] (Paul D. Smith)
Date: 01 Nov 1998 01:35:39 -0500

%% Steve Robbins <[email-masked]> writes:
 
  >> > Too complicated.  Just freeze code development on the head until
  >> > satisfied, TAG it as "release-2-4-0", publish the tar file, and
  >> > continue on the head branch.
  >> 
  >> And how would you do this? Just write a mail and hope everybody
  >> reads it in time? This won't work because we cannot communicate
  >> this well enough.

  sr> Well, Paul S indicates that other groups do development this way.  I
  sr> assume it is by email.  I don't have any direct experience in this,
  sr> however. 

Yes, it's done via email.  Typically before the fact, not after: "On
Wed. morning we'll freeze."  Some groups then "lock" the branch (either
physically if the software allows it, or by convention) so only the
maintainer can checkin and everyone else sends patches to him/her.
Others continue to allow everyone to add changes, just with a different
flavor.

Obviously, usually changes aren't added while a beta or release package
is being created, to keep things stable.

The key everyone has to remember is that we don't need to make it really
strict.  First, we _want_ it to be dynamic, and second, we can rely on
the professionalism of everyone involved--if we couldn't, we wouldn't
give them write-access to the tree.  This isn't like a big company where
you never know how some people managed to get their job (probably they
can sling crap well for a 45 minute interview), and you can't rid of
them afterwards.  Here, we all get to see exactly how
good/productive/responsible people are before giving them the
keys... and if they continually screw up we can revoke priviliges with a
keypress.  Not that I'm saying we should threaten people, but we can
expect, and receive, a higher level of ability and avoid lots of
"safety-net" overhead in the process.

My $0.02.

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Paul D. Smith <[email-masked]>         Network Management Development
 "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them.
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---

From: /users/domivogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Nov 1998 09:10:49 +0100

On Sat, Oct 31, 1998 at 06:40:35PM -0500, [email-masked] wrote:
> Dominik said he'd merged the patches sometime Friday afternoon.  I
> discovered as I was putting in the autoconf stuff early today, however,
> that several files were missing --- including the entire
> modules/FvwmAnimate directory!

Strange. I checked out the main branch after merging into a
new directory and got eveything.
-- 
Dominik Vogt, Hewlett-Packard GmbH, Dept. BVS
Herrenberger Str.130, 71034 Boeblingen, Germany
phone: 07031/14-4596, fax: 07031/14-3883, [email-masked]
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