Hi Thilo, Thilo Six wrote: > Excerpt from Thomas Köhler: > > -- <snip> -- > > And it would help people like me that used to maintain some > > runtime files in the past and now are stuck maintaining something > > they don't use any longer. > I think that is exactly the meaning of team maintenance. > I commit my myself NOW for bringing some runtimefile forward BUT do NOT commit > myself the next decade to do the same!
Well, that's fine, as long as someone else picks up the work later. > > For me, that would be the syntax files for uil (motif user > > interface language) and prolog, > Personally i saw some (some more) patches gone lost. To my syntax files? Well, it's possible I didn't see the mails, as I have to use a spam filter to be able to follow my private email at all, and you can never rule out false positives, but if you can tell me when there were emails that belong to one of my syntax files, I will have a look in my mail archives. [...] > > But of course, there once was a reason for the current model, > > which is "let people maintain the stuff who know what they are > > doing" > That exactly will not be broke by team maintenance! Well, there might be a problem anyway. I expect uil is no longer used very much, and prolog is still used, but I expect usage to be highest at universities. It might be that none of the vim users that edit uil or prolog files today are fluent enough in vim's scripting language to be able to maintain a syntax file, but they are glad there is a syntax file at all. My point is: team maintenance only works well if there are at least two people that know enough about *each* file type to be able to actually maintain the file. That might not be true for all of the lots of file types supported by vim right now. > > If a group of maintainers was to take over the runtime files, I > > would be glad to hand over the uil and prolog syntax files to > > someone who is willing to dedicate the time and effort needed, > > while I really would keep maintaining the koehler.vim colorscheme > > myself :-) > > There will be problems! No matter what. > But the point is currently there is no one who is willing to take over some > runtimefiles because currently there is no one willing to dedicate time to it. > My personal hope is that team maintenance will neglect the availability of > individuals compared to the availability of a team member. The problem is clear: If no one is willing to dedicate time maintaining runtime files, you will never end up having a team of maintainers... > >> Yes, a team of runtime file maintainers sounds good to me, > >> at least for files that have not been touched by the maintainer > >> in the last x years. BTW, some files might not be changed because there is not much need. I last changed uil.vim and prolog.vim in 2009 to support some new feature available in vim (and uil.vim yesterday due to Dominique's patch for @Spell support), and before that, I think I changed them somewhen back in 2004 or so (I would have to check my mail archive, as I don't have the syntax files in version control yet). > >> Some statistics: I've contacted the maintainers of 15 syntax files > >> this weekend to add spelling checker support. The stats so far are: > >> > >> - 4 responses received from maintainers of awk, forth, ocaml, scheme > >> (thanks!); > >> - 6 emails without response so far (but it's fair to wait a bit more); > > > > That should now at least be 5:5 :-) > > It's always a good idea to give people a few days time to reply, > > especially for their private email which they might not read for > > a few days. When I am on vacation, it is possible that I don't > > read my mail for two or three weeks - because my vacation tends > > to be a no-internet-for-a-while time :) > > Personal i gave people now more than 6 months to respond. Without success! > How long should we wait until we expect someone to be MIA? I'd say 6 months is too long, but please try several times, as your first mail might have ended up in some spam filter. But if you don't get a response after two or three months, the runtime file should be considered orphaned IMHO. I think this point should be discussed. > Personal i think Vim runtimefiles is like Debian without the so called MIA > proses and without Debian policy! > > Really Debian had the smae struggles in the past why not learn from their > experience they had in the past? There might be some more debian maintainers out there than there are vim runtime file maintainers, plus there are always some debian packages being orphaned or completely removed from debian. Maybe it should be discussed how to handle orphaned runtime files anyway. But I don't think we can send orphaned runtime files to Kibaale :) > I hate the not invented here syndrome not only for: > http://koeln.ccc.de/prozesse/writing/artikel/hacker-howto-esr.xml > which is german but it says at top that its english version is at: > http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html > > but also because of Vim is precision to the byte. It is striving for > perfection. Perfection will never be reached. There is always something one could do better :-) Ciao, Thomas -- Thomas Köhler Email: jean-...@picard.franken.de <>< WWW: http://gott-gehabt.de IRC: tkoehler Freenode: thkoehler PGP public key available from Homepage!
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