[PD-dev] Re: garray_update

[Hans-Christoph Steiner]

On Jul 6, 2005, at 3:42 AM, Tim Blechmann wrote:

> hi miller,
>
>> Well, forking the source wasn't my idea... I knew it would cause
>> trouble.
> well, for me it seems to be the only way to get a working performance
> system for me, that will do what i want without waiting for another
> century.
> basically the current devel branch has been extended so far, that it's
> not easy to merge it with Head any more ...
> "diff -u Head/src/ devel_0_39/src/ | wc -l" are more than 12500 lines
> (Head itself has about 66000 lines)
>
> i stopped posting patches to the patch tracker, since the patches would
> be way to big or depend on each other ...
>
> i'm currently thinking to fork off from pure data and release the
> current devel code as pure devil because it's not the same software any
> more and i'm loosing too much time with porting / merging ... (if i
> would have worked on a day job during the time i read diffs, merged
> files or rewrote things, i could easily afford a fancy powerbook
> and a few licenses of max/msp)
> i'd really prefer to spend my time improving pd / making music than
> merging branches or rewrite stuff...

If you want to fork, then do it, that's fine.  The people who have been  
working devel have been going that way for a while.  I fully support  
the goal of addressing usability issues now, that's inevitably going to  
break things.  But you can't expect people who aren't using devel at  
all to track your changes, especially if you are unwilling to submit  
working patches.  Like you said there aren't enough hours in the day,  
and we want to actually use Pd to make art rather than reading every  
bit of code written for Pd.

Sure, submitting patches is a slow process, but I think its starting to  
work.  Miller has started accepting a number of patches, mostly  
bugfixes, but its a start.  I am personally disappointed that there is  
a fork, each branch has its own unique strengths.  I still think that  
if the extra effort is taken to break up many/most of devel's changes  
into digestable patches, it will get included.

.hc



>
>> In general, the question of scheduling graphics updates is hard,
>> especially now that (arrays can contain (lists that contain (arrays of
>> scalars))), etc. Having "garrays" separate from the "real" data
>> structure mechanism was always a temporary measure, and now I'm glad
>> it's gone.  But what this means is that now we need a more general way
>> of updating changes to data. If I can think of a good one I'll get it
>> into 0.39 (it's prety high on the dolist at the moment...)
> i've already ported most of your changes from 0.38 to 0.39 to devel  
> (not
> the other way around, because that would be pretty impossible due the
> amount of code), so i would probably fork off with pure devil when both
> your changes to Head become stable and i consider my changes to devel  
> as
> stable.
> i'm trying to keep (binary) compatibility as long as possible, but if i
> have to break compatibility (e.g. to declare getfloatarray as
> deprecated) i would definitely do that ...
>
> pd has the potential to become a professional software, but i don't  
> want
> to wait for another 10 or 20 years for pd to become usable / threadsafe
> / low-latency optimized / professional.
> with all the troubles of forking the advantage would be that i could
> break Head and you could break devel without having to think too much
> about the effects on the other branch ... (well, we don't care about
> the effects at the moment, either :-(, which results in hours of  
> merging
> from Head to devel at the moment)
>
> the best thing of course, would be to combine the efforts of Head and
> devel/devil having several maintainers for several parts of pd (data
> structures, scheduler, dsp kernel, messaging, midi, simd, gui, build
> system, documentation, win32, osx, linux, irix, pda, cell phone,
> microcontroller, whatever) ...
>
> cheers ... tim
>
> --  
> mailto:TimBlechmann at gmx.de    ICQ: 96771783
> http://www.mokabar.tk
>
> latest mp3: kMW.mp3
> http://mattin.org/mp3.html
>
> latest cd: Goh Lee Kwang & Tim Blechmann: Drone
> http://www.geocities.com/gohleekwangtimblechmannduo/
>
> After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space
> would say "I want to see the manager."
> 				      William S. Burroughs
>
> _______________________________________________
> PD-dev mailing list
> PD-dev at iem.at
> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-dev
>

________________________________________________________________________ 
____

  As we enjoy great advantages from inventions of others, we should be  
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and  
this we should do freely and generously.
                                                                          
                          - Benjamin Franklin