On 16 May 00, at 12:45, Gilbert Carl Herschberger II wrote:
> All our members are volunteers. We must treat all our members with respect,
> not just a few. It means that we don't put any member through untold agony.
> We change a name as the last resort. We only change a name when we have
> absolutely no choice.
At the current stage (pre-alpha) I don't think we can be very strict
about namespace issues. Things are very fluid right now and
change must be anticpated and accepted. Especially since we
don't have a really stringent way of controlling, assigning and
deciding namespace usage.
In my experience, with these collaborative projects, its much more
important to have the active coders "do things". Action. So if
someone is producing code, and it temporarily breaks things, so
be it. Anyone that decides to use that new code, must live with
the breakage and apply the appropriate patches and work arounds.
When things get to a "stable" release time, then we worry about
working things into a more structured system, and working out
conflicts. So things go in cycles, experimental (expect changes
that break things and things done that are knowingly "wrong").
Then you get to a stable release, where you try and cleanup the
hacks and inconsistencies. If you don't want to be bleeding edge,
then stick with the stable releases where these types of issues are
addressed.
IMHO, namespace problems are pretty trivial at this point. If a
coder wishes to use a particular namespace, then let them. If it
breaks things, then its broken for their build. If it gets integrated,
then we as a group must choose their approach versus another and
workout any namespace conflicts. With experimental code, I think
namespace issues are not really anything to consider. If you're
building things that work directly with anything in the jos.* package
then you'd better be prepared for namespace and classname
changes for the near term... you're working on the very bleeding
edge and not only is the target moving, but you're standing on a
shifting and changing foundation.
-iain
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