Switching from CVS to Subversion: test svn repo available

[David Hampton]

On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 20:37 -0400, Chris Shoemaker wrote:

> Maybe that's a reasonable criteria for giving someone commit access to
> the OneTrueBuild.  But, that's not reasonable criteria for giving
> someone access to convenient SCM.  That's like saying: We love for
> people to join us on this trip across country.  We know the best way
> is this train we're on, so we see if they can keep up for a while on
> bicycles, and if they can, we let them on the train.

Your analogies are tired and they aren't winning you any friends.
Clearly you have different core beliefs from the rest of the developers,
and continual sniping is not going to change anyone's mind.  Yours or
theirs or mine.  My job as a developer is to provide useful and quality
code for the users of Gnucash, not spread SCM to the masses.

> I've spent more time refreshing out-of-tree patches that I have
> actually developing code! (ok, not really, but a LOT of time, it's a
> PITA.)

You should have spoken up the moment you saw Neil's patches go in and
said to yourself "that's not related to the gtk2 port."

> It's pretty off-putting.  I think, ideally, *anyone* who wants
> to should be on the SCM train.  Let everybody go as fast as we know
> how.  If people think it's best to require some test of endurance in
> order to write to the OneTrueBuild, then so be it.  

Its not an endurance test.  I for one want to see the quality of code
that people write before I give them free reign to play in the "One True
Build".

> Personally, I think code should stand on its own, but whatever.

I agree with you there.  Code should stand on its own, but I insist on
knowing that its quality code.  I'd rather take the time to look at a
new developer's patches up front than to have the program blow up in
strange and mysterious ways, and then have to track down problems after
the fact.  Been there.  Done that with customers yelling at my manager.
Don't want to do it again. 

> > and old devs leave as they find other projects to work on.  The main
> > issue is that ALL the core devs got burned out after 1.8 and there
> > weren't any fringe devs to pull up in the ranks.  
> 
> You make it sound like you believe that the derth of fringe devs is
> some random, inexplicable circumstance.  Surely you have some theory
> (or maybe knowledge) for *why* a large, popular project went from a
> healthy dev rate to barely alive?

Define healthy dev rate.  In the four years that I've been associated
with the project its never had more than a handful of core developers.
None of the core developers are still around from when I started working
with Gnucash, except for Derek.  I've gone from guy submitting patches
to the build system to primary developer.  Josh started sometime after
me and wrote the entire scheduled transaction system.  Neil's come in
and redesigned a core part of the engine.  We have the same number of
core devs as in 2002, just different ones.

> Or are you convinced that the fundamental impediment to new devs is
> code complexity?

Yes.  And the fact that no-one is willing to learn Scheme.  (Can't stand
it myself, but its what we have.)  The amount of scheme is diminishing,
but I doubt it will ever go away completely.

> Or do you just want to agree to disagree on this?

Yes.

David