Site repository status(es)

[Brian Rice]

So, the big problem with getting involved with Slate right now is my
neglect of maintaining clean repositories. Right now there are several
patches in main  and one or two in alpha which bungle builds or cause
problems just with the build-up of the regular image itself.

I've also decided to heed the ongoing advice to use some clearer roles to
describe the repository.

So, to that end, how about I set up "stable" vs "unstable" vs "???"? Would
removing the main/alpha branches once these are set up (and described on
the website) annoy too many people in the wrong way? Is there something
else I should do entirely?

I want to fix Slate on the limited time/attention I have right now, and I
don't care how much change/compromise it takes to do that, so please speak
your minds.

There is still that new server that can be set up. I've given up the idea
of jails for now, although that can be done later. I just want a decent
site setup there and will grant enough rights to those who want to help.

I'm rambling... I just want to expose my willingness to do things
differently to make Slate more useful.

--
http://tunes.org/~water/brice.vcf

[J. Pablo Fernández]

On Tuesday 18 July 2006 17:02, Brian T. Rice wrote:
> So, to that end, how about I set up "stable" vs "unstable" vs "???"? Would
> removing the main/alpha branches once these are set up (and described on
> the website) annoy too many people in the wrong way? Is there something
> else I should do entirely?
>
> I want to fix Slate on the limited time/attention I have right now, and I
> don't care how much change/compromise it takes to do that, so please speak
> your minds.

I like KDE's release cycle. I described it here:
http://pupeno.com/blog/software-release-cycle
The advantages: it gives the developer plenty of space to break everything in
the process of redesigning and it gives the user a place to look for
something that works. It give the developers a clear please to put bug-fixes
for those stable users. And for those users trying the unstable; they have
been warned.
Hope it helps.
--
Pupeno <pupeno@...> (http://pupeno.com)

[Timmy Douglas-2]

"Brian T. Rice" <water@...> writes:

> So, to that end, how about I set up "stable" vs "unstable" vs "???"? Would
> removing the main/alpha branches once these are set up (and described on
> the website) annoy too many people in the wrong way? Is there something
> else I should do entirely?
>
> I want to fix Slate on the limited time/attention I have right now, and I
> don't care how much change/compromise it takes to do that, so please speak
> your minds.

Well, from my point of view (which is probably limited by the fact
that I haven't maintained any projects before), I think slate is
already 'unstable' enough in the sense that it won't be usable to the
general public for a fair amount of time. For this reason I think it's
enough that there is just one branch, main, and then someone would tar
up the darcs file and make a static link somewhere for people to play
with. If there's just one branch, I think it will be easier to stop
the random breakages... but I don't really know from experience. I
think most users that want to play with it don't want to fool with
checking out a darcs repository even though they are becoming more
common nowadays.

[Matt Revelle-2]

I agree with Timmy, the project is unstable enough that only one
branch is needed.  If darcs supports tags, that can be used to mark
milestones of stability or feature additions and provide an archive of
those releases.

Funny, googling for "darcs" and "tags" showed this on the first page of results:

http://lists.tunes.org/archives/slate/2005-March/001271.html



On 7/18/06, Timmy Douglas <timmy+slate@...> wrote:

> "Brian T. Rice" <water@...> writes:
>
> > So, to that end, how about I set up "stable" vs "unstable" vs "???"? Would
> > removing the main/alpha branches once these are set up (and described on
> > the website) annoy too many people in the wrong way? Is there something
> > else I should do entirely?
> >
> > I want to fix Slate on the limited time/attention I have right now, and I
> > don't care how much change/compromise it takes to do that, so please speak
> > your minds.
>
> Well, from my point of view (which is probably limited by the fact
> that I haven't maintained any projects before), I think slate is
> already 'unstable' enough in the sense that it won't be usable to the
> general public for a fair amount of time. For this reason I think it's
> enough that there is just one branch, main, and then someone would tar
> up the darcs file and make a static link somewhere for people to play
> with. If there's just one branch, I think it will be easier to stop
> the random breakages... but I don't really know from experience. I
> think most users that want to play with it don't want to fool with
> checking out a darcs repository even though they are becoming more
> common nowadays.
>
>

[Chris Double]

WIth darcs projects I'm involved with I've found having a 'stable' and
'unstable' repository to make things much easier.

Have 'stable' guaranteed to run at any point in time and all
development done in unstable. As patches in unstable are seen to be
mature these are pushed to the stable repository.

Darcs is really designed to have seperate repositories rather than
using tagging, etc to identify stable and unstable imho.

Chris.
--
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz

[J. Pablo Fernández]

On Wednesday 19 July 2006 03:08, Chris Double wrote:
> WIth darcs projects I'm involved with I've found having a 'stable' and
> 'unstable' repository to make things much easier.

I think it is better not to have a stable repository but a set of stable
repositories like I described here:
http://pupeno.com/blog/software-release-cycle
That is, you have repository "slate" with unstable code always going to the
future. On a release, you make a tag on "slate" called 0.1, branch it
into "slate-0.1" and make the tag 0.1.0, tar it up and release 0.1.0. "slate"
starts to work towards 0.2.0 and "slate-0.1" towards 0.1.1. When 0.1.1
arrives, you tag 0.1.1, tar it up and release it. Eventually you'll reach 0.2
on the "slate" branch and you repeat: tag "0.2", branch to "slate-0.2",
tag "0.2.0", tar it, release 0.2.0.
That allows people to go to the bleeding edge, slate, or some
branch, "slate-X.Y" which just gets more stable as time goes on.
Now, in this cycle it is ok to only have one branch, like other
suggested, "slate", as long as you want until you release something. About
making tags of particularly stable points for people to play with without
using darcs, the answer is, they are snapshots. You can create tags
like "snapshot-N" were N is a number that you increment and that's it.

The reason why I think that a stable and unstable branches are not really nice
is because you'll eventually merge a lot of things from the unstable branch
into the stable. That would bake stable less stable (favoring features over
stability), you'll get users pissed up because upgrading/updating the stable
branch wasn't supposed to break anything and suddenly it broke everything.
Stable branches should only get closer to perfect stability (ok, a bug fix
can insert another bug, that's just an accident, it should be fixed and
that's it) while the unstable branches goes up and down in the roller coaster
of instability.

My two cents.
--
Pupeno <pupeno@...> (http://pupeno.com)

PS: whatever you do, please, oh! please, don't use Linux (and Gnome)
versioning of having the odd versions unstable and the even versions stable.
I believe it makes no sense (unless you refuse to use a versioning system
because it doesn't have all the features you want favoring a madness of
patches, like Linus Torvalds used to do).