Re: [Gdbheads] proposed change to GDB maintainership rules

[Daniel Jacobowitz]

On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 11:14:39AM -0500, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> Finally, and most importantly, I think during 2003 it became apparent 
> that GDB's community (as identified by those participating in GDB's 
> development processes - reviewing and contributing patches, engaging in 
> disucssion, testing, ...) was, for the first time, being dominated by 
> non-"Cygnus" players.  Assuming this state of play continues, we should 
> finally be able to slay the "Cygnus controls and dominates GDB" dragon.

I would say, was being less dominated by "Cygnus" players, which is not
the same.  I won't pursue this line of discussion further, since I
haven't seen this dragon at work.

> - the other GDB perenial - stagnation
> 
> More for the record.  I'm always seeing pressure to slow GDB's 
> development, principably because it makes the maintenance of 
> uncontributed code harder.  Last year saw an increased level of pressure 
> intended to slow GDB's development, I'm guessing in responce to an 
> increase in GDB's rate of development.

Please expand upon this, for my education.  The proposed changes are
pressure (from GDB developers) to increase the rate of GDB's
development further.  I think that is more relevant to GDB as a GNU
project than commercial pressure to slow development - none of which I
remember seeing discussed publicly.

> - the other other perenial - old dormant / inactive developers
> 
> There is still no clearly documented process for addressing this. 
> Adding more developers to an area appears to be approach used by GCC? 
> It's only a short term solution.

No, GCC's approach is to have active global maintainers who can and do
approve patches in otherwise dormant areas.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer