[Ocaml-lib-devel] Goals & Process

[Nicolas C. <war...@fr...>]

Hi -new- list !

First of all, I think we should try not to talk about COAN or something like
that right now. Why ? Because the discussion has still to go on on the main
OCaml mailling list, and such idea has already been raised a few time, but
no global agreement was found amoung the community. And also, because I
would like to wait what for example Maxence Gesdon, the OCaml Hump author,
is thinking about it.

So, my first proposal about the goals is that this list be dedicaced only
( rigth now ) to the ExtLib project.

Personal comments about what have been discussed on the mailing list :

- about the license, I don't really care if it's LGPL or not, but as I
already suggest, I think that being "free for any use" would be better

- about how to process , I agree with the "separate CVS branches and then
vote for commiting" style of running the project. Could you Amit please
setup the CVS so that each user can I its own directory with write access
( and read for the others ) as well as an "extlib" directory only writable
by administrators ?

Few rules I think we should follow :

- the ExtLib ( or any other name if you don't like this one :) has to remain
100% OCaml code ( no C part ! )
- any ExtLib part should match at least of of theses properties :
    ( from JMSkaller speaking about the C++Boost Library )
    * it provide important functionnality which is hard (or take time) for
the client to code up correctly [ important is the keyword ]
    * it provide a simple convenience which can be heavily used in any kind
of application [ simple and heavily are the keyword ]
    * (adding this one) it provide standardized access to a commonly used
data structure [ standardized is the keyword ]
- since right now the inclusion of bytecode in a binary is file-based, the
ExtLib has to be split in several files to keep the users binaries small

How to process :

- each developper develops its own branch of the ExtLib
- once a developper has a branch ready, he have to ask for peer review /
comments from the ExtLib developper community
- if the community reach an agreement on branch committing, the branch is
added to the ExtLib
- if the community don't reach an agreement, it's in the end ExtLib
administrators ( no more than 3 or 4 people ) who are deciding to add it or
not
- if the community mostly disagree, the branch is not committed, and
administrators don't have to settle
- once a branch is committed, its maintainer is no longer the original
developper, but the whole ExtLib community
- ExtLib bug fixes are addressed directly to the administrators which can
either patch the ExtLib or classify it as "not a bug"
- ExtLib existing branch improvement/addons use the same process as
committing

All theses are proposals, if the current people here ( who's in there ? :)
agree then it would be nice to put theses rules somewhere in the ExtLib
FAQ/Rules.

Nicolas Cannasse