Re: [Axiom-developer] Maintainers

[Waldek Hebisch]

root wrote:
> > > Based on your extensive work would you consider being the
> > > person who maintains axiom--silver--1? That would settle
> > > one of the items raised by Gaby.
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, however some clarificatinons are needed:
> > 
> > 1) ATM I work with SVN on SourceForge and I hope to avoid contact
> >    with arch
> 
> Arch holds the master sources, which get mirrored everywhere, into
> CVS on sourceforge and savannah, as well as SVN on sourceforge and
> google. If you're not willing to do this because of arch then that's 
> fine. I just thought that you were showing great initiative and might
> find it worthwhile to try. Handling multiple SCMs would be the least
> problem (currently axiom lives in arch, cvs, svn, and darcs).
> 
> The hard part is trying to figure out how to agree to things
> that you disagree with because other people have perfectly
> rational opinions. Working with arch is trivial. Working with
> people is hard. And among them I'm probably one of the most painful.
> 

Arch in itself is not big problem. But I belive that development
will take place in SVN and I prefer to be there. Also, I misunderstood
your message: my first impression was that you argeed with Gaby
critique and wanted to implement one of his proposals.

> > 2) "one of persons who maintain ..." -- IIUC Gaby wants to avoid
> >    single point of failure (me too).
> 
> How you maintain axiom--silver--1 would be up to you. Be aware
> that about 22 people have write access to silver at the moment.
> 
> I don't think "single point of failure" is a rational notion
> in terms of SCM. You or I could simply stop patching the code
> and the world would hardly notice since many people have write
> access.
> 

Maybe "single person bottleneck" is better term.  If key person
on a project say "I stop working on a project", this is bad but
the project has good chance to survive.  If key person is slow
responding ("I will do that next week", "Sorry, I forgot aboy this")
at first the effects look harmless, but this can easily kill
the project.


> It's a hard job and one that will put you in a position 
> of contention with people at times.
> 
> Think carefully about it and let me know.
> 

Tim, I have some experience managing software relases and have
my views what high quality means and how to attain it.  And
frankly, my views differ from current Axiom practice.  I thought
that your proposal is part of establishing new practice
-- I see now that I again misundrestood you.

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
address@hidden