[ODE] From unstable to trunk...

[Gary R. Van Sickle]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ode-bounces at q12.org [mailto:ode-bounces at q12.org] On 
> Behalf Of Adam D. Moss
> Sent: Friday, July 01, 2005 6:07 AM
> To: 'ode'
> Subject: Re: [ODE] From unstable to trunk...
> 
> 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.
>

Cygwin does this too.  The main troubles are getting people sending patches
there in the first place (instead of the main list).
 
> 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.
> 

Agreed and agreed, if "a lot more love" == "more active maintainership".
With an active maintainer(s), the rest of the stuff tends to sort itself
out, mainly because the maintainers just decide what they want to do and do
it.  I've never seen it work the other way around, e.g. suddenly a dozen
maintainers pop up because a project switched from cvs to subversion.

> --adam
> -- 
> Adam D. Moss   -   adam at gimp.org
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-- 
Gary R. Van Sickle