Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Dealing with huge xsce repo size
There's a political reason for the size of the repo. In my discussions with Daniel Drake at the last SF summit, we discussed the relationship between the work of XSCE and his finished 0.7 school server. The XSCE repo started from a clone of 0.7, which itself appears to trace back all the way to the beginning of Martin's work on the server. Daniel asked me to pretty up the XSCE commits, and collect them into functional chunks, and submit them to Martin for review, as he had done going from 0.6 to 0.7. When I tried to learn, and use the git rebase command, my lack of skill, and patience, came in the way of that objective. The number merge conflicts, and the need for merge-by-hand, seemed to me to be just too likely to introduce errors, and the need for additional debugging cycles. At this point, the code base has diverged so much, I'm not willing to rework the history as we discussed almost a year ago. The reason to go slow in trimming down the size of the repo, from my point of view, is that I'm not sure XSCE has replicated all the essential functions of 0.7, particularly in the area of activation, lease management, and anti-theft. These are essential features for large deployments. Until we learn about, and learn to test, in this area, we might want to keep around the original functioning code. George On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 12:37 AM, Anish Mangal an...@activitycentral.comwrote: Hi, This is perhaps a very contentious topic, so I want to discuss with extreme caution :-) The size of the git repository for xsce is 70MB The actual size of the files is 3MB Now, I don't want to hurt anyone's sensibilities AT ALL here, but I feel 70MB is quite a huge size for a repo containing code worth only 3 MB. I also feel it's a hindrance to keep code development nimble, making it unnecessarily difficult for users to download large repos. (Remember, if you're cloning a git repo, and you lose connectivity, you have to start over). Are there any thoughts we could improve the situation? Should it be improved? Best, Anish ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] A couple of thoughts about moving forward.
On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 9:47 PM, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hey all, I would like to offer some reflections after the last couple of weeks. I stepped aside because I felt I was hindering the project more than helping it. I spent years being frustrated by Langoff's hold on OLPC-XS. Then after less than 8 months I found myself controlling the funding for the 6 person DXS team, creating the roadmap project specification, and doing much of the external communication. All of this while receiving dozens of emails and calls per week from deployments pressuring me to make XSCE and DXS different from what the core XSCE team was interested in doing. My shortcomings may have caused a split between XSCE and DXS. When David and I were discussing whether Ansible should be part of 0.4 XSCE, I felt a fear of creating a situation I have created many times before, in my life as a programmer. I tend to add more complexity than I have brain power to sort out during the debugging phase. So, now David has moved forward with DXS, with an aggressive schedule, adding features based upon customers requirements. And when he wants to incorporate DXS into the next revision, XSCE 0.5, the fear crops up again. I need help dealing with my fear of complexity. Are there any volunteers? In a sense it's the Red Hat, Fedora situation with a twist. The quick turnaround, feature development test bed, is the commercial enterprise. The volunteer, community based, effort is the slower moving, and more conservative. So now, our history, becomes our handicap. XSCE has not asked for much help from the people and the accumulated wisdom available on server-devel. But now I think we need that perspective. I don't want to have a hold on XSCE. I'm feeling like I need to pass the baton to someone, or a group of someones. I've been working hard at a volunteer job, and there just are no more hours in the day that I'm willing to devote to the XSCE enterprise. George It was not a recipe for community success :( So, I spent the last couple of weeks regrouping. If anyone has any suggestions for how they think I can help the community without becoming too smothering please let me know. I have been a little concerned about the relationship between the XSCE team and the DXS team. We put a pretty intense deadline of mid Oct for delivering commercially supported Dextrose Server. The goal of this division was to ensure the upstream XSCE team had the freedom to scratch their own itches while ensuring the downstream DXS team was focused on specific customer requirements. As a side effect it feels like there has become a gap between the teams. I would like to encourage Anna to step into the role of liaison between the two team. She can make sure that everyone is aware of what is happening. External communications hit a couple of rough patches over the past couple of weeks. While keeping the signal to noise ratio high, the use of a semi-private mailing list seemed to be hindering external awareness of what we were doing. Rather than ask the project to change, I decided to unsubscribe from this list and only remain subscribed to the server-devel list. The goal was to see how the projects was seen from the outside. My takeaway is that we should start to shift as many technical threads as possible to server-devel, there is a wealth of knowledge on that list. On planning and organization issues, the noise(passion) on server-devel might still might be a bit high for a young community like XSCE to handle without getting bogged down. I would suggest revisiting this decision one month prior to the release of 0.5. Good work everyone. Adolescents is a tough time for everyone especially community projects :) -- David Farning Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] A couple of thoughts about moving forward.
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 09/08/2013 04:49 AM, George Hunt wrote: And when he wants to incorporate DXS into the next revision, XSCE 0.5, the fear crops up again. I need help dealing with my fear of complexity. Are there any volunteers? Hi George, If you missed the DXS/Ansible IRC demo a couple days ago, my impression was that Ansible was a fantastic, and STRAIGHT FORWARD, tool that is both more robust and simpler than bash scripting could hope to be. It also appeared that all the heavy porting from bash to ansible was already done by the DXS team. Maybe my outsider impression helps alleviate some of your fears. - -braddock -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSLMFSAAoJEHWLR/DQzlZu/QYIANABx31C2h0IdnMb4qcY1Mkl 4PpzBb32Gi/MDLsk196p0ZGdyMHZ/GFp58DY0ol7lGx+N8M2A44ulthQJV8LsdBu yExpJ7oMVBijsvjD6Bv7uycgjpqLQV7RsCL1MVPj5Z46wHzyiQzevVss4cCQ+/S2 Bs21BB7u8TLE60kXyRUZtPbzqwYJhT+2uSakpo3enbMyOq5tqgeQb7kTN6n0kyBt AOsy3A4lH097McHW7eJozFzYHoogBAOCxUL9x7YUmOWEwkjI9xYaaFPdn/p3ssla AtR4B464DQUSErknkb4MIir5EsMJUqs4DNMnGLA/elSkb1+7/DDqdiYwsEogX1A= =1dEz -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Dealing with huge xsce repo size
I presume you speak of the git://dev.sugardextrose.org/xs-config repository. I don't think 70 MB is a problem: - cloning is normally only done once, - developers can be advised to clone and then copy so as to avoid having to clone again, - developers on restricted bandwidth should learn to use --depth, The --depth=1 clone of git://dev.sugardextrose.org/xs-config costs only 422 kB. Adjusted: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Dealing with huge xsce repo size
Hi James, On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 6:04 PM, James Cameron qu...@laptop.org wrote: I presume you speak of the git://dev.sugardextrose.org/xs-config repository. Yes I don't think 70 MB is a problem: - cloning is normally only done once, - developers can be advised to clone and then copy so as to avoid having to clone again, - developers on restricted bandwidth should learn to use --depth, The --depth=1 clone of git://dev.sugardextrose.org/xs-config costs only 422 kB. This is very helpful. Thanks. I suspect this doesn't affect users submitting patches? Adjusted: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/XS_Community_Edition/0.4/Hacking -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] Dealing with huge xsce repo size
On Sun, Sep 08, 2013 at 07:41:29PM -0700, Anish Mangal wrote: This is very helpful. Thanks. I suspect this doesn't affect users submitting patches? Correct. You can try it yourself. 1. clone your copy of the repository, 2. clone again with --depth=1, 3. make the same change to both repositories, and commit, 4. use git format-patch, 5. evaluate the difference in the output, 6. apply the patch to any repository. For example: % cd /tmp % git clone --depth=1 file:///olpc/sugar.git sugar-limited-depth.git % git clone file:///olpc/sugar.git sugar-full-depth.git % (cd sugar-full-depth.git echo 'John Doe d...@example.com' AUTHORS git commit -m 'test change' AUTHORS git format-patch -1) % (cd sugar-limited-depth.git echo 'John Doe d...@example.com' AUTHORS git commit -m 'test change' AUTHORS git format-patch -1) % diff -u sugar-full-depth.git/0001-test-change.patch sugar-limited-depth.git/0001-test-change.patch (only the date and patch hash changes) -- James Cameron http://quozl.linux.org.au/ ___ Server-devel mailing list Server-devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/server-devel
Re: [Server-devel] [XSCE] A couple of thoughts about moving forward.
On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 6:49 AM, George Hunt georgejh...@gmail.com wrote: On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 9:47 PM, David Farning dfarn...@activitycentral.com wrote: Hey all, I would like to offer some reflections after the last couple of weeks. I stepped aside because I felt I was hindering the project more than helping it. I spent years being frustrated by Langoff's hold on OLPC-XS. Then after less than 8 months I found myself controlling the funding for the 6 person DXS team, creating the roadmap project specification, and doing much of the external communication. All of this while receiving dozens of emails and calls per week from deployments pressuring me to make XSCE and DXS different from what the core XSCE team was interested in doing. My shortcomings may have caused a split between XSCE and DXS. When David and I were discussing whether Ansible should be part of 0.4 XSCE, I felt a fear of creating a situation I have created many times before, in my life as a programmer. I tend to add more complexity than I have brain power to sort out during the debugging phase. So, now David has moved forward with DXS, with an aggressive schedule, adding features based upon customers requirements. And when he wants to incorporate DXS into the next revision, XSCE 0.5, the fear crops up again. I need help dealing with my fear of complexity. Are there any volunteers? In a sense it's the Red Hat, Fedora situation with a twist. The quick turnaround, feature development test bed, is the commercial enterprise. The volunteer, community based, effort is the slower moving, and more conservative. So now, our history, becomes our handicap. XSCE has not asked for much help from the people and the accumulated wisdom available on server-devel. But now I think we need that perspective. I don't want to have a hold on XSCE. I'm feeling like I need to pass the baton to someone, or a group of someones. I've been working hard at a volunteer job, and there just are no more hours in the day that I'm willing to devote to the XSCE enterprise. Nine months ago I recommended you as release manager for XSCE and I stand by that recommendation today even though it has meant the AC lead Ansible work has lived out of tree for the last couple of months. The release manager has a tough (some might say impossible) job in community project. In a thriving community there will be a million people all clamoring that their work be committed NOW. The release manager must weigh the pros and cons before accepting a patch especially when it is significant. In this case you and Jerry said 'hold on, I don't see the value in this ansible stuff. That was the right decision at the time. It is the branch authors responsibility to prove the value of their work. Anish et. al. put their heads down and translate xs-conf to ansible. My reasoning for personally stepping back from participation in XSCE was to ensure credibility in the XSCE decision making process. I believe that porting xsce to ansible is the best way forward for the ecosystem, XSCE and AC. However, if it appeared that I was using my roles within XSCE to push an external agenda, XSCE would forever be tainted. As george says, there are a lot of skilled people reading these lists. Is Anyone willing to step up and help ensure that we have a neutral community that balances the (often passionate) needs of school server developers, deployers, and users. George It was not a recipe for community success :( So, I spent the last couple of weeks regrouping. If anyone has any suggestions for how they think I can help the community without becoming too smothering please let me know. I have been a little concerned about the relationship between the XSCE team and the DXS team. We put a pretty intense deadline of mid Oct for delivering commercially supported Dextrose Server. The goal of this division was to ensure the upstream XSCE team had the freedom to scratch their own itches while ensuring the downstream DXS team was focused on specific customer requirements. As a side effect it feels like there has become a gap between the teams. I would like to encourage Anna to step into the role of liaison between the two team. She can make sure that everyone is aware of what is happening. External communications hit a couple of rough patches over the past couple of weeks. While keeping the signal to noise ratio high, the use of a semi-private mailing list seemed to be hindering external awareness of what we were doing. Rather than ask the project to change, I decided to unsubscribe from this list and only remain subscribed to the server-devel list. The goal was to see how the projects was seen from the outside. My takeaway is that we should start to shift as many technical threads as possible to server-devel, there is a wealth of knowledge on that list. On planning and organization issues, the noise(passion) on server-devel might still might be a
