Participants: Bill Page, Kai Kaminski, Tim Daly Start time: 4pm EST End time: 5pm EST Purpose: discuss how feasible conference calling is and whether skype can work
1) Skype conferencing works. One of the key issues that arises is that you need to have headphones because the microphone picks up the speaker output of your computer which causes echos. Another key issue (unresolved) is how to pass control of a conversation from one person to another. Perhaps we need to use Robert's Rules of Order or some such. Suggestions are welcome. 2) Kai dialed in from a MAC. He volunteered to look at the MAC port. Tim volunteered to 'partner' with this effort (see later discussion) 3) SVN is an ongoing problem. Bill volunteered to try to set up an SVN server on axiom-developer. Tim is partnering with that effort. Bill can do the setup and I can struggle with the checkin process. 4) One way of getting around the sourceforge SVN problem would be to create nightly tarballs. Savannah has that ability but it is unclear whether sourceforge does. Tim volunteered to look into it. 5) There was some discussion of setting up Xcode on the MAC. Apparently some people use a mouse, which Tim doesn't. Things were learned. 6) Bill make reference to the HP TestDrive machine set. This allows us to try building Axiom on a range of servers. See http://wiki.axiom-developer.org/HPTestDrive 7) Bill pointed Tim to the patches made for the SVN improvements branch to enable building Axiom on solaris. Tim will look into possibly merging this into the Gold/Silver branch. 8) There was a discussion of the possibility of losing work due to abandoned or partially completed branches. For instance if someone does a partial port of Axiom to a MAC How do we make sure that the work is not lost? Bill suggested two possible improvements. One is that each branch is 'owned' by someone who is the person responsible for making changes and applying patches. The second idea is a 'buddy system' where a second person volunteers to 'partner' on an effort. That way you have to report your progress to someone other than yourself. 9) An important point is that skype will allow us to contact each other thru voice in a less formal way. However it is important, especially with conference calls, that the information about the discussion and the decisions gets recorded and reported to the mailing list where it can be journaled. The current suggestion is that the 'host' (there can only be one host on skype) which is the person who creates the conference is responsible for taking notes and reporting results. 10) There was a discussion of which version (Gold, Silver, or Build-improvements) to choose when trying to port to a system. Tim's take on it was that the question revolves around the issue of whether the system is known to build on the target. If it is known to build then the only issue is whether the new Makefiles in Build-improvement works. If it is not known to build then Gold should be used so we can isolate the Makefile bugs from the source code bugs. 11) There was a discussion of the next skype conference. The proposal was that it should occur near 1pm EST so that most people can attend. It was also proposed that there be regularly scheduled conferences. Tim suggested 1pm on Wednesday and/or 1pm on Saturday. 12) The next conference is scheduled for 1pm on Monday Sept 18 at 1pm Send your skype ID to Tim Daly so he can conference you in. Tim _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer