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From: Michal Ludvig (michal_at_logix.cz)
Date: Wed 04 May 2005 - 01:22:19 BST


Sam Vilain wrote:
> Ola Lundqvist wrote:
>
>> As I now have the possiblity to apply a number of fixes directly to this
>> upstream version I will do so. I need your advice on a number of things
>> though. If you do not want me to modify some parts here please tell
>> me as I may do it quite soon. :)
>
> This is wiki-style development; don't even worry too much about the code
> compiling. Just make sure that your commits have clear intent. Have trust
> in the Version Control System!

Don't take it personally as I just wonder - is your effort blessed by
current project maintainers? (Herbert, Enrico, ...) Or is it a fork attempt?

I'm not sure if you have an experience with development management, but
allowing wiki style development seems contraproductive for me. Newcomers
may have good ideas but don't know the project enough in details =>
their solutions could be deeply suboptimal. Very good and proven
approach is to let the newbies send their patches to a development list
first, where the current maintainers could comment on it, reject,
approve... Only after some time when you trust they wouldn't break
anything, give them a direct write access.

I have participated in many opensource projects and I know how "naive"
patches people (incl. me) try to commit at the beginning. They could fix
a particular problem they address but without knowing the broader
context they'd often break something else. WiKi is good enough for
texts, but not for coding. The amount of crap getting in this way would
be a real pain in the ass to clean once you're about to make a release.

Eh, and one more "proven" thing - set up a mailing list whete all diffs
from commits would be automatically posted by svn. If you really allow
everyone commit everything you should at least post-examine the changes.

> That being said, commits which are untested and don't compile make a bit of
> work for others around release time. So be sure to at least hang out in
> IRC to receive the flames.

Often quite difficult given the different timezones people live in ;-)

Just my two cents (admitting I haven't contributed anything to vserver
so far :-)

Michal Ludvig

-- 
* Personal homepage: http://www.logix.cz/michal
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