Re: [Sablevm-developer] suggestion: sablevm developer doc

[Chris P. <chr...@ma...>]

Prof. Etienne M. Gagnon wrote:

>On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 09:28:08AM -0500, Chris Pickett wrote:
>  
>
>>...  There is no maintenance of the branch ... 
>>    
>>
>
>That's the problem.  CVS's technical weaknesses dictate that branches
>should be short lived.  Except for vendor branches, you can't really
>think of maintaining *parallel* stable, experimental, and "private"
>developer branches, where changes are merged from any of these to any
>other.  You can imagine fixing a bug in stable and wanting to merge
>the fix in experimental, *and* the reverse.  CVS is simply not
>appropriate for such development model.
>  
>
I agree, CVS only allows for a few different models.  However, other 
than the problem of creating a branch every time you want to release, I 
can't really see what's wrong with having short-lived branches.

>I know, you are suggesting to use some other's project development
>model (Mozilla).  My reply is to say, we should in the short term
>stick to the simplest model (single trunk) to avoid being bitten by
>the shortcomings of our support tool (CVS).
>
Can we have write access in the meantime then?  There's only 5 of us 
right now.  It should be fairly easy to track responsibility for a 
broken trunk, and besides, it's under version control anyway.

Primarily this makes it easier to keep up to date with the current 
repository.  Right now David and I have separate CVS's in our accounts, 
and are continuously updating from the SF CVS using import and then 
merging.  Certainly CVS was not intended to be used this way when there 
are only a handful of developers.  We could set up a cvs-commit mailer 
that automatically sends out all changes and who made them.

Also, although some documentation could go in sablevm/doc, when I'm 
reading a file, it's nice to put comments in so that I don't have to 
reread the source later.  These comments can become immediately useful 
to other developers if I have write access, and it saves us both the 
headache of using patches (me making them, you applying them).  I'd also 
like to set up and auto-generated doxygen documentation system, but this 
can wait until the summer.

The only reason I was suggesting the Mozilla model was because it seems 
fairly straightforward and because it seems like the best CVS can offer 
(that and also Mozilla is one of the largest projects using CVS).  But a 
single trunk is okay with me.

>  I have got money from
>NSERC to buy a server to host our development.  Once we have this
>server, we can install on it whatever tool we think is more
>appropriate.  My quick reading of the subversion home page convinced
>me that it would be a far more appropriate tool than CVS, allowing us
>to use the Mozilla Development model or change it easily if we find it
>is not an appropriate model, without being locked out of interesting
>models because of the underlying tool.
>
>I do not plan to buy the server before the Summer, as I do not have
>time to shop for it and install it before then.  It also gives us the
>time to determine our needs.
>  
>
Okay, I think switching to Subversion is a good idea and I'm happy 
you're getting that server.  It is intended to replace CVS altogether.  
Hopefully one day, SourceForge will host Subversion-based projects... it 
just needs a certain critical mass before things pick up.

I don't *desperately* need write access, but it would make life a little 
easier.  What do other people working on the source think?  David?  
Grzegorz?  Archie?

Cheers,
Chris