Re: The current hurd development system - or: optimizing for fun

[Tom Bachmann]

Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    o Use a better revision control system.
>       Cvs is outdated in several aspects. Most notably truly atomic
>       commits and file moving are missed, thus not allowing -Ofun to
>       be relized.  Easy merging and branching are also required.
>
> This implies that -Ofun was never possible for any project using CVS.
> Thing is that CVS is actually quite good, despite its small quirks,
> none of which are so immensly important that it is crucial to change
> VCS (not to mention the huge job of converting history!).

Of course not change the VCS of a running project. But if we start from 
a mostly new codebase, using a better VCS would not be too much work.
And no, you IMHO cannot realize -Ofun with cvs. If nearly everyone can 
change code, it has to be possible to easily rollback the complete 
change of an unixperienced/malicious commiter.

>    o Make commits easy and straight forward.
>       Revising all code by a handful of core developers is a serious
>       bottleneck and source of frustation.
>
> The reason why it is frustrating is because the set of develoeprs who
> can actually do anything is zero.  Not because one has to vet things
> through them, which is quite a quick job in almost all cases.
>
>       For the beginning it might be OK to give all frequent users of
>       the list that ask for direct access to the repo (possibly in
>       different branches), but commit rights must be casted far and
>       wide.
>
> That is how it already works.

I guess you only comment on the first statement. Commit rights aren't 
casted far and wide. Doing so would mean giving everyone the right to 
commit who wants to.

>    o Work on code.
>
> Would you like to work on some code? :-)

You are quoting me out of context here. Working on Hurd/Mach is no 
alternative if we are speaking about Hurd/Coyotos.

>    o Highly integrate the community.
>
> The more people who work, the more people will join...

I think we have to do more than passively wait for people to join.

> Cheers!

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-ness-