Re: When AnonCVS or Daily Snapshots Resume?




Note to webmaster@gnome.org.  I cc'd this to you, since the RedHat labs
site implied that Dr. Mike was the person who is handling the GNOME
website.  This post is in reply to his comments on the Rumour Mill, but
as far as I can tell, he does not read gnome-list.  If you are not the
same person, but have contact with him, please forward this along.  If you
have no contact with him, I appologize; however, there is some reference
to information on the web page, and you probably should read this anyway.



On Thu, 25 Jun 1998, Thomas D. Marsh wrote:
> I saw this on the rumour mill at RHAD:
> http://www.labs.redhat.com/news.shtml.
> 
> --thomas
> 
> 
> Wed Jun 24 11:39:10 EDT 1998
> (Dr Mike) Life is slowly returning to normal - spent most of the past
> few days moving and recovering from a great trip to New Orleans. It
> really is energizing to go to shows and meet lots of people excited
> about Linux and GNOME.

GNOME definitely is something to get excited about, I am very glad people
see it.  I am also glad that RedHat is publicising it.


> The new CVS server is almost ready to go.  People keep wondering about
> anonymous CVS for GNOME

People would wonder alot less if there were some substantive response when
people ask about it.  It took almost a week for someone to get around to
saying "It's down because the server was overloaded.  We should have
access back on the order of three weeks, if all goes well."  Since then,
the only reply requests for updated information have gotten was "It's
down", usually, such requests were met by silence by those who know what
is going on with the computers.

I am very glad that RedHat is hosting machines for GNOME development, and
I certainly agree that the prinicpal developers should have priority when
it comes to CVS access.  But it would be nice to get some information as
to what is going on regarding the servers, and it would be nice if the Web
Page would reflect such information, not only in the news, but in the
instructions it gives developers.  It still suggests that developers to go
to the CVS server, and log on anonymously.


> - let me just say we're not going to be hosting a anonymous CVS server
> here.

Since this is new information, contrary to prior announcements, it would
be really nice if such information were posted to the either the list or
the web page.  According to a post by Miguel, the web page is supposed to
be the official site for GNOME information.


> My understanding is  that there will be several anonymous sites which
> mirror from the main CVS server.

Are any mirrors up yet (not counting Jim Pick's cvsweb server)?  Are
mirrors going to come up when the new CVS server goes in place?  Or are
these mirrors hypothetical entities who we will still have to wait
indefinately to see.

Yes your statement makes it clear that you don't have an answer to the
question, but you are in a far better position to get an answer than most
of us.


> Personally, I don't understand why anyone needs CVS access
> unless they are making regular commits to the tree, 

We don't _need_ anonymous CVS access, but all the documentation recommends
using the CVS access.  Also, if there is no CVS access, there is no
procedure in place for submitting patches.


> otherwise it is a heck of a lot more efficient to just post daily diffs
> and let people ftp/http those instead.

There were daily tarballs and RPMs available.  These were good.  These are
gone.

Yes, using these were quite efficient.  It would be nice if we could have
such tools.  As for daily diffs, I find them awkward, it can be hard to
tell exactly what diffs have and haven't been applied.  I would be
very happy with daily RPMs back, happy with tarballs, and satisfied with
diffs.


> Anonymous CVS was turned off on the current site because it was bring
> the machine to its knees, causing major interference with regular
> development.

That is a vaild reason to shut anonymous CVS off.  However, nobody has
given a reason why the daily snapshots were shut off.


> And anyway, the GNOME 0.20 release is the best place to start if you
> want to see what GNOME is all about. 

The GNOME 0.20 release is a far from a good reason to cut off all
development channels.  I am currently going through the gnome-canvas code
to see how to add features to it, so I can help get the widget ready and
can work on a program that requires such a widget.  The gnome-canvas
widget is not avalable in the 0.20 release.

I am tired of seeing the comment "that's been fixed on CVS for a while,
I guess that it didn't make it to the 0.20 release".  And I am
particularly tired of having to constantly recompile the entire GNOME
system when I only need access to the code of a package or two.  I cannot
use the GNOME 0.20 precompiled binaries, but I would be able to use the
daily snapshot binaries that had been distributed until May.

But what I am most tired of is the impression I am getting that nobody who
knows what is going on on the CVS server, FTP server or web server is
involved in the list.

I am sorry for this long rant, but I am a developer only in my limited
spare time, and all the development support that attracted me to GNOME
has disappeared, leaving me very frustrated.

One suggestion I have is:
  Could there be an email address or two to send to if there are
  problems with the CVS server and/or the FTP server, like there
  is one for problems with the web server?  This could make it easier
  for us to get information on downtime, and easier for the maintainer
  to find out about problems.

Thank you very much,
-Gleef



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