[PD-dev] a few questions

[Mathieu Bouchard]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Tim Blechmann wrote:

> > > but shouldn't we be able to solve this by _actively_ using
> > > source-forge's feature request / bug tracking system?
> > agreed. we first get the users to talk and _then_ we figure out who
> > that is addressed to... else it's too much "bureaucracy" for the user.
> it might add some bureaucracy, but it will be easier to follow, what
> actually is going on ... that's not the case ATM ...

What I meant by bureaucracy is not that... I mean that reporting a bug
currently exposes the user to having to figure out who's in charge, and
it's often not obvious; it's like walking from office to office to get
told that you should ask someone else. And then they have to follow up to
make sure someone is actually taking care of the issue instead of just
letting it slip through the mailinglist archives.

The "paperwork" of the bug tracking system shifts the bureaucracy towards
the developers and away from the users, and hopefully shrinking it down a
bit.

Maybe that would work better when there is only one branch, instead of
three... I dunno, does Sourceforget's support reporting a bug once and
solving it separately for three branches?

> what are your plans for impd? i mean, do you plan a second branch
> independant from miller's / devel starting with 0.37 or will you try
> to create a patchset from your changes that will more or less apply to
> miller's future stable releases?

I won't do anything relative to Miller's releases. I will only work
relative to devel_0_37. Even then, the patchset is looking more and more
like just copying my g_*.c over devel's...

> but on the other hand if the developers have the patience to talk to
> each other once about what way pd should go, 

My intentions regarding Pd are embodied by my cvs-commits; but for a
succinct summary,

* I think the current Pd GUI code should go away completely,

* that the client/server should be properly decoupled,

* that a model/view architecture is the way to achieve that,

* that it ought to be easy for people fluent in
  C/Tcl/Tk to write Pd GUI externals using a published API.

> 1. develop faster (although there is a small overhead at the beginning)
> 2. find bugs earlier
> 3. avoid forks that are difficult / impossible to merge again
> 4. ???

5. profit!

:-}

> maybe we should change the intention of the branches ... take the
> devel branch as stable branch with only X-P changes / patches, and
> impd as developing / unstable branch that might not be usable until it
> becomes stable and miller's as release branch ...

Sounds good, why not...

________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard                       http://artengine.ca/matju