Re: Re: pybloxsom (fwd)

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:08:20 -0600 (CST), will guaraldi
<[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Doug wants to prototype the testing stuff he's working on in our
> repository.  Additionally, Steven seems to be using more "advanced"
> features of CVS.
> 
> My problems with this are three-fold:
> 
>   1. I don't know enough CVS administration to really follow what's
>      going on, or fix it if it goes bad.  I don't know if anyone
>      on our team knows enough CVS administration to fix things if
>      they go bad.
> 

I think that we can handle tagging and branching, and that it's
important enough to do. Really, if we can get that down, then a lot of
our problems go away.

>   2. It is causing a lot of checkin email that I'm not really
>      following.  I use the checkin email to keep track of things and
>      as a poor-man's peer review queue.

I don't know. There've only been 25 messages in the last 2 weeks, and
that doesn't seem excessive. Isn't it pretty simple to weed out the
ones that are no-brainers? I ask because I really don't know.

> 
>   3. It seems people are communicating less and prototyping more.  I'd
>      really like to discuss things before they start getting checked
>      in and moved around.  Additionally, we have a small code-base and
>      communicating with eachother will help a lot when people are
>      making changes to the same pieces of code.
> 

If we have tagging and branching, as we should, then we should be able
to keep CVS bleeding-edge, it seems to me. This is *by far* the
optimal solution. Imagine that Doug's prototype branch gets too far
off the main one to be merged back in easily? I've run into that
myself, and it causes bad wastes of time, and developer frustration.

If we want to have people contributing, we need to make this a
developer-friendly (not necessarily administrator-friendly)
environment. Bias alert: this is amazingly easy for me to say, since
I'm a developer and not an administrator.

> Here's why I keep talking about me.  I have no idea how dedicated you guys
> are to this project.  We've had developers come, do some stuff, and then
> disappear off the face of the earth.  That's fine and is
> expected--peoples' lives change and this is an open source project.
> However, the remaining people can't be left with a bunch of stuff they
> don't know how to deal with.  Additionally, I don't plan to work on this
> project for the rest of my life either.  I want to leave the project in a
> state where it has a lot of momentum and new people can come in,
> familiarize themselves with things, and help out.
> 

Understood, and your commitment to this project has been demonstrated.
However, I just don't think that making big prototype branches that
only a single developer has access to is a good solution. I've not
committed a whole ton of stuff for just this reason. As I start to use
source control for real (I've got my own subversion server for
pyblosxom now, and I'm using it at work), I see that the only way the
system works is with small, atomic commits happening frequently.

> Anyhow, so that's where I'm coming from.  I don't really have time to go
> become a master of CVS right now, so that's not really an option for me.
> If someone in the group is very proficient with CVS administration and can
> promise that they're going to be around, then I'm fine with depending on
> that person to deal with CVS.
> 

I don't feel like tagging and branching requires a huge mastery of CVS
- but I've never done it either. I think that the benefits outweigh
the negatives, especially as we start to add developers.

> Additionally, we do have some standards and I'd like to add to them as the
> team gets bigger so that we're all on the same page and the process of
> what we're doing is documented.  Currently that documentation resides at:
> 
>     http://pyblosxom.sourceforge.net/blog/static/development
> 
> Incidentally, it includes information on how to format your doc-strings so
> that they get picked up by EpyDoc for the API documentation.
> 
> Right...  so going back to Doug's issues, I'm not sure what to do.  I'd
> prefer he prototyped in his own repository, but if you guys can work out a
> way for him to do what he needs to do and it's better that he does it in a
> central place available to all of us, I'm ok with changing my stance.
> 

I'd prefer that our CVS HEAD branch stayed bleeding-edge, with him
committing as soon as he does something. I think I've explained why in
too many words already :)

> Additionally, if communicating by mailing list doesn't work for you guys,
> what better ways can we make sure we're all in the loop?  Email works best
> for me because it's asynchronous.
> 

Email works best for me to. Is doug on the list?

Peace
Bill Mill
bill.mill at gmail.com


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