Re: critical issues

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi Luke,

nice to see you joining the discussion :)

W dniu 3 stycznia 2012 23:06 użytkownik Łukasz Czerwiński
<address@hidden> napisał:
>> That's like +1111 from me!
>> In general, i agree that we should think in a more 'release-oriented'
>> way ("last stable release was half a year ago, so we should make
>> another one, so i'm fixing whatever needs to be fixed to make this
>> possible") instead of 'free coding' way ("i care about this issue,
>> i'll fix it.  And that one.  Oh, we have 0 criticals, so let's make a
>> stable release before an obstruction occurs!").  To do so, we would
>> have to work more as a team, less independently.  How can we achieve
>> that if GOP7 showed that we don't want to?
>
> and:
>
>> > And we better be in a position to provide answers,
>> > since there is no more effective way to spend our time than on getting
>> > more people to spend their time, and love, and interest.
>
> Regarding all those fragments of Janek's and David's emails: For some time I
> have been observing how bugs are being fixed in Lilypond and spent some time
> on conversations with Janek.
> For me there is almost no team work in Lilypond - only a bunch of geek
> trying to fix some issues, but without a leader who coordinates all actions.

I might have given you a wrong impression, i don't think its really
that bad.  There is some teamwork, but no leader indeed.

> As far as I remember, some time ago you have tried hard to make some big
> changes in Lilypond, but finally there was no big revolution...

Hmm?  I remember that i mentioned to you the rewrite of vertical
spacing system, which was implemented quite successfully.

> Without a leader that will make key design & implementation decisions
> Lilypond will improve in a slow pace, letting Finale and Sibellius gain more
> and more users. Probably some of you will return to the old row - is a goal
> of a Lilypond to substitue Finale or compete with Sibellius. I think there
> is no point in loosing your energy and time on that.
> Instead we should do as much as possible to constantly improve Lilypond.
> That means not only fixing critical bugs, but also: anticipating future
> stability problems, constantly improving end user documentation and the
> quality of source code (reduce complexity, comment code and so on). By now
> there is a huge work to be done and Lilypond needs someone who will form
> guidelines and priorities.

That's generally true and i'd love to have a leader and lots of
teamwork, but who would be the leader?  It would be a time-consuming
task, none of our current developers has much spare time; it would
also require lots of knowledge, so only few would qualify :(
You might consider reading
http://lilypond.org/doc/v2.15/Documentation/contributor/gop_002dprop-7-_002d-developers-as-resources
It's simply that we discussed this before and didn't manage to do
these (good) things you propose.

cheers,
Janek