Re: [Alephmodular-devel] A1's problems (was: Developer Rant #1 :) )

[Woody Z. I. <woo...@sb...>]

On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 04:56  PM, Br'fin wrote:

> Unknown on the AM versus restructuring A1 issue. At least part of where 
> I felt AO had failed was in its CVS management. Plus I could no longer 
> be sure whether a behavior was AO amended or original. At which point, 
> it just seemed easier to start fresh with Bungie's code. This would 
> guarantee that for AM I had a complete history from Bungie's code to 
> present.

I agree, perhaps A1's greatest single failure was not preserving the 
histories of those files.  I feel I was quite outspoken at the time 
about the importance of preserving them, and I was (outspokenly) aghast 
when I found that all that information had been simply discarded.  
(Well, I guess it's still in the cvs "attic", but it's hard to reconnect 
current files to their 'attic' counterparts...)

> There were other issues too, relating to cruft. Since shifting to MacOS 
> X 10.2.x and PB 2.0.x, I've been unable to figure out how to run AO 
> within the debugger. Talk about annoying.

Yeah, I was unable to link the thing for about 6 months, til I found 
-force_flat_namespace...

Maybe it's the older devtools, but I find the debugger almost useless 
within PB; it always seems to get hung up or confused or something.  I 
always run it from the command line.  FWIW.

> My overall assumption is that if AM can be steered right, then it 
> should be possible to adapt things like AO's OpenGL code. And it 
> wouldn't be the first time I had shoe-horned things together :)

Well, I hope you're right... and hearing you state it as if _you_ plan 
to do that sort of thing (and not just leave it to unspecified others) 
gives me cause for hope.  :)  It probably is a Good Thing to figure out 
a framework and then fit the pieces together, rather than vice versa as 
would need to be done with A1... but OTOH I think examining A1 could 
inform the design of that framework.  Learning from history and all 
that.  But I'm sure that's all part of the plan.

BTW thanks for the bug summary.  I find it a little curious that you 
seem to feel that your looking for and fixing these bugs now, as opposed 
to earlier, is somehow A1's fault... but I can see where you're coming 
from nonetheless.  I guess the real problem with A1 is that it has no 
leader.  I mean, I guess we have to consider Loren the primary developer 
(at least over the past year-and-a-third or so, can't really comment on 
earlier times - guess I'm a relative newcomer compared to you guys), 
given the amount of work he's put into it and continues to put into 
it... and as the primary developer I guess he is sort of looked to as a 
leader.  But I don't get the impression he considers himself to be "in 
charge" of the project (nor does anyone else, AFAICT).

I think it's a Good Thing that AM has someone In Charge (and doubly so 
that that  someone happens to be as thoughtful as Br'fin).

Well anyway I think we've talked this one to death ... what's next for 
us to talk about wrt AM?  Proposals for decomposition into systems and 
subsystems etc.?  Or are you not quite at that point yet?

Woody