Re: [Libxmlplusplus-general] resume of one day's work

[Stefan Seefeld <seefeld sympatico ca>]

Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-02-04 at 15:49, Stefan Seefeld wrote:
>
> > Murray Cumming wrote:
> >
> > > I haven't looked at this yet, but didn't I say that you shouldn't take
> > > cvs access as permission to just check in whatever you like? The need to
> > > revise your patch 6 times should have shown you that you probably need
> > > to go a bit slower. Your arrogance is beginning to astound me.
> >
> > my WHAT ? Now you calm down a bit, will you ?
> >
> > I'v sent various mails to the list discussing my different proposed 
> > additions, and got some positive feedback. Are you able to browse the
> > archives ?
>
>
> Everything seems to be sorted out now. I'll just respond quickly again
> to this. The issue is not whether the changes are appropriate - The
> point is that you are not a maintainer so you should not make changes
> without getting permission first - certainly not API changes.

Ok, now that is something to discuss. As I repeatedly stated here, I
fully agree that having write permission comes with a lot of
responsability, for example not to apply 'random changes' as you call
it.

I never did.

Every single change I did was proposed days ahead on the list. Nobody
objected. In the contrary, most suggestions were supported.
In particular, Christophe (the maintainer) never told me to do this or
that, and there is nothing defining what rights I have and what not.

I really don't understand where you get the idea that I have to get
explicit permission for each checkin. That's not my understanding on
what cvs write permissions are for.
Had I known, I may not have taken the trouble to join the project, as it
is just too cumbersome (instead, I would have rolled my own little 
project and sent regular mails informing you about stuff I think may
interest you so you could create patches and apply them yourself).

But again, I think the fun is really to work this out and get an
agreement on how libxml++ should look like in its final form.

> I asked
> Christophe not to give you cvs write access immediately so that you
> would have the chance to develop the correct habits first. In my
> experience that is a smoother process.

From my perspective the problem here is that you have a very strange
definition of 'correct habits'. You are certainly not getting me to
ask you for checkin permission each time I want to make an checkin.

I *never* would make API changes without asking for agreement. So far,
the only API changes I made are additions, and I asked whether people
would agree on them. Since nobody objected (in what I considered a
reasonable time frame), I took it a checkin to that effect would be
fine.

> > Who are you that you give me permission or not to do things ?
>
>
> I am the person who revived the project, and created the stable/unstable
> release plans.

Where are those plans ? The only thing about a release I heared was
you discussing with Christophe about whether or not to include my
first patch into the 1.0 branch (and thus, release).

> I am the person who has successfully released and
> maintained stable APIs for gtkmm, gnomemm and libsigc++ among others,
> sucessfully encouraging and integrating many developers.

Now that is quite beside the point. Or do you want me to number all
the projects I have been creating/leading/maintaining, too ? That
doesn't get us anywhere. We are both developers in the libxml++ project,
where we have to show our merrits.

In a nutshell, I'd like to see clearly how you (and the other project
participants) envision the project's future (where do we want this 
project to go ?) and the way it is maintained.
For me it's really just a matter of efficiency. I'm looking forward
to have constructive and open-minded discussions about the project's
design and code. But I'm a bit worried about the overhead implied by
an overly restrictive development process.

Really, the thing may be as simple as stating clearly what kind of
changes are acceptable and what are not.

Stefan