Re: Some questions

[Leonard den Ottolander <leonard den ottolander nl>]

Hi Pavel,

On Mon, 2005-05-23 at 03:13, Pavel Roskin wrote:
> > Not doing a release for years even though there has been significant
> > progress is what affects the credibility of the project.
>
> I agree.

...

> I agree except the fact that nobody has ever told me that all e-mail was
> read and acted upon in some way.

I believe we (Pavel Shirshov, Roland Illig and me) thought this was
quite obvious from all the activity on the mc-devel list. I wouldn't say
that *every* mail has been acted upon, but yes, many have indeed been
acted upon.

> I'm not sure I understand you here.  I'm not against a release.

Well, you've been giving a totally different impression for months. And
from my contacts with other developers I can say that I am not the only
one that has this impression.

> I'm just saying that I cannot do it properly at this time.  If someone else
> can take the responsibility for the project and make a release, I'm fine
> with it (provided that the maintenance is transferred openly, and all
> interested parties have their say).

I'm quite willing to take partial responsibility for a 4.6.1 release
based on MC_4_6_1_PRE (presuming we first have a release candidate to
stamp out the last small but serious issues - we could address the
larger slang-2 and other issues (samba, gcc-4.0 signedness warnings
etc.) for 4.7.0). So are Roland Illig and Pavel Shirshov I believe
(although I haven't spoken the latter in quite some time).

> I see what you mean.  You are saying that I could concentrate on
> maintenance rather that review and discuss every patch about Python
> keywords or something like that.  If it's OK for everyone, I can do it.

Yes, that's the point I'm trying to make. All issues on the TODO for
4.6.1 have been fixed, including the X11 SSH issue (although that patch
should still be reviewed before it can be committed).

It's very obvious your time is limited. If you could use this limited
amount of time to cook up a (post 4.6.1) development roadmap with the
developers it shouldn't be necessary for you to do any reviews (unless
you want to of course). Is this an acceptable scenario for you, or do
you feel you can't take responsibility for the code base in this manner?

> If you want me to make a release from the 4.6.1 branch, I can do it
> within a few days.  I'll need to move some stuff from the HEAD branch
> though just to make it easier for everyone.  In particulate, the Alt-O
> behavior should be consistent.

I would vote for a release candidate from the MC_4_6_1_PRE branch. In
december it was decided by the then active developers (pchel, rillig and
I) that we'd freeze development on 4.6.1 in the PRE branch, so people
could start doing experimental work for a post 4.6.1 release in the HEAD
branch. This might not be the things were done in the past but it is the
actual situation.

If you insist on doing a release from HEAD (or am I misunderstanding
you?) I'd suggest you'd not use the new viewer code. Note that this is
*not* a remark about the quality of the code, it's just that that code
has had hardly *any* testing apart from it's author, Roland Illig.

Leonard.

-- 
mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research