Hi David,

On 21/07/17 0:50 , David Anderson wrote:
> This discussion comes down to two contrasting models for software
> development:

Sorry, no, that's not the point.

> 1) The "waterfall model":
> 2) The "agile model":

I know both models very well, professionally and scientifically.

> Requirements and design can change on the fly.
> New features are divided into smaller self-contained pieces,
> which are completed and merged with master frequently. 

Yes, totally right.

(master serving as integration branch in this case)

> Development need not be done in a separate branch.

Where does this conclusion come from? To the contrary: agile
development, due to its velocity, needs separate feature/topic/fix
branches because many developers need to work on the same codebase at
the same time, without interfering with each other. One needs
coordination (by workflow). Also, developers need a stable base to start
off from, not something that's broken most of the times. How do you want
to achieve that when everyone develops (let alone tests) in the same
branch? How do you want to do integration tests without affecting
development or release maintenance?

Please ask yourself why tools like git, global agile development and
particular SCM workflows like GitFlow more or less arrived and spread
massively at the same time. Mere correlation or actual causality...?

> Oliver prefers the waterfall model,

The opposite is true. I'm all for agile development like Scrum and I'm
even evangelizing to do so wherever I go (and see fit). Why have I tried
for years to convince BOINC to move to git and make use of Continuous
Integration for instance? Because I prefer the waterfall model?

> so strongly that he won't work with people who use agile.

This all leaves me kind of speechless. I can't even fathom how one can
reach a conclusion like that, based on what I've described. In
particular since SCM (that's all we talked about in this thread) is just
one part of implementing a process model instance, it doesn't define it.

There are obviously severe misunderstandings at play here and I'm
honestly starting to doubt they can be overcome - unless other projects
step up and chime in as well.

> I prefer the agile model for several reasons:

All those reasons/motivations (first sentence of each given bullet) are
absolutely fine. Unfortunately the conclusions/consequences reached are
wrong. What I and others proposed *will help you* with what you're doing
and trying to achieve as it's at the heart of agile development. So far
we've just failed to show you how.

Apart from that there are other developers, projects and contributors
(existing and prospective) who depend on how BOINC's SCM is done. I
think we agree that their needs need to be taken into account as well,
even if you have the impression that their needs are at odds with yours
- which might not even be the case.

> Also, let's not confuse the choice of model with how we do stable branches.

Precisely!


HTH,
Oliver

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