Re: Can we improve things?

["Kevin Kubasik" <kevin kubasik net>]

Since this discussion seems to have rapidly devolved from discussing
slow Sysadmin response times to a futile debate over revision control,
I'll share my $0.02 on both topics.

1) Gnome Systems - This is always going to be less than perfect, but
the current state of affairs is almost embarrassing. And I don't mean
that to sound harsh towards our Sysadmins, its an impossible and
thankless job, and my hat is off to those brave souls that keep us
running. The Subversion discussion is for later, but with regards to
p.g.o, I really like the Ubuntu system. Which is basically, its a
module in source control, there is a README or wiki page, and if you
have write access, your the newest member of the planet. This does
raise the concern of 'trigger-happy-typo-timmy' who screws up the
planet, but I think the embarrassment should serve as a strong enough
deturent to be careful, and theirs not much more of a risk than
someone updating a projects website (thats hosted at Gnome) or
releasing a module.

2) Source Control - With the recent explosion of interest in
distributed revision control systems, I guess this argument was bound
to come up again. Focusing on the inital problem (SVN accounts are way
backlogged, but apparently there are fixes to our account system on
the way to help remedy this). I do think that if we were to switch to
a distributed system magically and completely tomorrow, that would
make things much easier. But if the Gnome admins are already up to
their necks, should we really throw a massive VCS migration on top of
that? I think if we really want to consider a migration or joint
solution, there would need to be some interest in the
implementation/integration of service.

That being said, I am much more for the use of a DRCS (really, they
all work, just pick one), if the cost of migration has been negated.

Just my $0.02,
Kevin Kubasik

On 9/7/07, Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com> wrote:
> 2007/9/7, Johannes Schmid <johannes schmid gmx de>:
> > Hi!
> >
> > > 1. Developers can clone the main repo and the maintainers (people with
> > > write-access) can just pull from their cloned repos. This way a
> > > developer won't really need write access and he'll just keep on
> > > committing his changes to his repo and inform the maintainer(s) about
> > > his newest cool changes and the maintainer(s) can pull those changes
> > > if they like/need them.
> > (...)
> >
> > Have you ever been in charge of a svn module? If you had to commit
> > everything that goes in from people that you know produce good code you
> > would really loose a lot of time.
> > I like the idea to give those people write access that have contributed
> > much and good code because it saves much work and time for the
> > maintainers. And if you give more people write access to the git main
> > repro and would end up at the same point as we are now.
>
> With the exception that the developers that *don't* have access have
> much better tools to keep their changes up to date and also to test
> changes not committed to the upstream repo.
>
> For example, it's an interesting thought to speculate how many peole
> would have tested the GtkBuilder stuff, if it would have been
> fetchable from Johan's personal git instead of it being a huge patch
> in bugzilla requiring you to iterate over
> patch-test-unpatch-patch-cycle manually. The people willing to do that
> were not many I bet (I was one of them though).
>
> Git allows the svn-like development model, but surpasses SVN
> tools-wise and in the ability to keep personal work away from
> everybodys face (ie. the central repository).
>
> --
> Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi
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-- 
Cheers,
Kevin Kubasik
http://kubasik.net/blog