Stefano Mazzocchi wrote, On 26/02/2003 12.44:
Jeff Turner wrote:...
I want the scratchpad out of the main cocoon CVS module (now xml-cocoon2, in the future just 'cocoon').
Why? because I want to reduce the number of core dependencies we have since the whole thing it's becoming unmanageable.
core dependencies? It's a separate jar, separate build, separate dependencies. This comment doesn't stand.
There are two sort of things in the scratchpad:
- alpha blocks - alpha core stuff
I think we all agree in moving the scratchpad alpha blocks in the blocks directory and mark them as alpha. we'll add a block descriptor file that indicates their status and we'll be happy.
I won't. I'm not sure there is consensus.
This leaves us with the alpha core stuff.
Many of you say that Schecoon would not have happened if it wasn't for the scratchpad. I don't see this. Nobody helped Ovidiu and the scheme syntax argument was discussed over email, not CVS. He proposed, we commented, some disliked, some liked, some ignored, some backed up. The fact that code development happened on our CVS did it really made a difference?
Only one: we saw commit messages. We followed development.
And that's not much?
Now, did you guys ever heard about a nice CVS concept called "branching"? Ovidiu wanted to work on some cocoon internals, wanted to have a place to try things and didn't want to step on our toes, so he should have asked for a branch and we would have given it to him.
IIRC, you were the one that wanted the scratchpad instead of branching. Or is my memory weak...
the scratchpad is a lazy version of the same concept, too bad that when developers use branches the tend to go quickly to the point where they can merge it with HEAD, unlike the scratchpad that is *already* in head, so it will be picked up anyway by the release, even if marked sideways.
I want people to work on HEAD so that they feel the pressure and do a better job.
If I refactored the build on a branch (or even worse, on another CVS module), how many of you would have tried it out and debug it?
It's not the same thing. Sand on Sand... if we keep piling alpha stuff on the main branch we will remain alpha. And branches in CVS are a PITA!
Martin Holz wrote: > P.S : Improving the build system is really worth some temporary > inconvenience. Thank you very much.
See?
Now, about the alpha-committers: the scratchpad creates one-man-shows even if we know that our committers have an extensive log of being able to work with others.
If you open up the gates to everyone, do you really think that this will help finding new developers for this community? I strongly doubt it.
I'm positive it will generate tons of half-baked concepts and components mockups, but it will reduce the filtering that community performs and will remove the incentive for them to work harder to gain access to CVS.
The overall quality of code will be much lower and they will feel confortable with this since nobody will (could) complain for political correctness.
The result will be that we won't ship anything from that since we will fear of insulting some of those one-man-shows.
So, at the end, you have simply created a poor-quality collection of one-man dumped and half-baked efforts. Also known as the result of the "Sourceforge Effect".
Sure, one of a thousands might be worth considering. But somebody will have to spend his energy finding out which one of these is worthwile and since cocoon users and devs will concentrate here, the amount of energy to screen those efforts will be very low.
- 0 -
I continue to propose to kill the scratchpad for alpha core code without creating an alternative.
Keep pushing then. You haven't tackled my concerns a bit yet though.
--
Nicola Ken Barozzi [EMAIL PROTECTED]
- verba volant, scripta manent -
(discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
---------------------------------------------------------------------