Re: Distro patches

[Mark D. Baushke]

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Marc W. Mengel <mengel@fnal.gov> writes:

> Slyvain Beucler <beuc@beuc.net> wrote:
> 
> > I am planning to install cvs-1.12.13 to serve repositories, probably
> > manually installed instead of using a distro package.
> > 
> > I looked for differences in the Debian package that we currently use
> > and was somewhat surprised to see 20-30 patches, covering bugs as well
> > as new features (including an interesting CVSROOT/passwd override),
> > most if not all _not_ included in HEAD. Fedora does the same, to a
> > lesser extent.
> > 
> > 
> > Were those patches rejected by the CVS devs, or were they simply not
> > submitted here?
> 
> My guess is that they're sitting in limbo, like some that I've
> submitted, which have sat in  one or another of the cvs bug trackers for
> literally years unassigned to anyone; with no response to them
> whatsoever; and then folks have to keep reapplying patches with every
> release that comes out.

I have occasionally worked to try to get folks at the various
distributions to try to get them to provide documentation and test cases
for their modifications. Usually all I get is a deafening silence.

In at least some cases, the patches are not really general purpose
enough to work across other distributions.

If there are real bug fixes that are in distributions and not in the
STABLE or FEATURE branches for CVS, please do let us know. We are
interested in fixing real bugs.
 
If you have any particular features that you want to see added, the big
difficulty is adding documentation and test cases for them.

> I occasionally post here, asking if anyone has seen it, looked at it, or
> considered it, and get no response.

I suspect I was not getting some of those messages. I am not sure if it
is due to overly agressive mail filters or other problems. I should
probably spend more time looking at the bug pages, but my volunteer time
is a bit limited of late.

> I mean, it's fine, it's their project and they aren't required to
> respond to me, as they don't know me from Adam, nor even to consider
> any patch any random person might happen to send.
> 
> But I suspect that's why some of the forks like NTcvs have started --
> deafening silence in response to suggestions.

Actually, cvsnt.org started for other reasons. The two groups of
developers still chat with each other and try to ensure that new
additions to the client/server protocols do not cause interoperability
problems.

        -- Mark
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