[TCLCORE] Re: More Tcl Core Team discussions

[Donald G P. <dg...@ca...>]

> The only worry that I have about this is that we must be careful not to
> let stuff hang out too long on branches, or do too much work on any given
> branch, as it becomes increasingly difficult to incorporate the code back
> into the head the longer it ages on a branch.  

Agreed most strongly.  That's why I propose branches for tasks
(the TIP 9 branch where we add weebles to [wobble]) and not for
developers (the dgp branch where Don Porter works on all kinds of
unrelated improvements to many parts of Tcl...).

By the time a TIP gets approved by the TCT, there's probably a
pretty good idea among its proposers how to implement it.  Perhaps
they've already been passing patches around on their TIP mailing list.
I expect many of the TIP branches to be rather short-lived.

Once the first implementation of a TIP is accepted into the HEAD, then
it's the maintainer's problem to work out any remaining bugs.  He'll
get help from the community of course, but there will no longer be a
separate branch to merge from.  The TIP branch is closed.

> I don't think we need to add any extra machinery to cope with this,
> but we should run a vigorous education campaign for anyone who is
> working on a branch with a knock-off of the Open Source slogan:
> "Submit early, and submit often..."

Also, the only problem will be if two or more TIPs are taking the
same section of code in different directions.  That section of code
has a maintainer who'll have the eventual responsibility of merging
both TIPs into the HEAD, so he'll be keeping tabs on both and can 
guide them not to diverge too much.  Merges between TIP branches
can help too.

I think the natural interests of the maintainers in creating
maintainable code will keep things in reasonable check.  No extra
machinery necessary.

DGP

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