[ODE] From unstable to trunk...

[Adam D. Moss]

Gary R. Van Sickle wrote:
> Now that said, I do think the idea someone floated about having an
> ode-patches list could make your (and any other potential maintainers) life
> easier - assuming people will use it, and use it properly (i.e. not send
> questions there).  I think the chances of those assumptions being proved
> correct are pretty low, and I think more time would be spent telling folks,
> "great patch, but don't send patches to ode@, send them to ode-patches@,"

I only recall one other project (wine), off the top of my head, which
has an XXX-patches@ list, but it works *extremely* well for them, both
in terms of people posting patches to the right place in the right format
and then having other developers actually getting around to peer-reviewing
the patches.

They've been doing this for donkeys years though, so I don't remember
what teething/learning troubles they might have had early in the process.

It's just one alternative that I think could improve the patch-flow.
The previous system of a very few busy people noticing+understanding+
testing+applying patches scattered on the mailing list wasn't working,
and now the newer system of the UNSTABLE branch has marginally
helped but has its own complications.

We don't have many developers submitting patches in the first place,
and that's indeed a problem which this all isn't going to address
(apart from not so actively discouraging developers after their first
patch submission seems to fail), but the process for juggling the few
patches that we DO get really hasn't worked in the past and still needs
a lot more love.

--adam
-- 
Adam D. Moss   -   adam at gimp.org