[PD-dev] uninitialized values bug

[David Plans Casal]

On 4 Oct 2005, at 05:28, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:

> On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, David Plans Casal wrote:
>> Just 2eurocents from a devel_0.39 -and- MAIN user...my guess is we're 
>> going to
>> talk about forking here, at today's IRC meeting, right?
>
> However, the crack in the floor will continue widening until Miller 
> gives
> up gatekeeping his branch alone.

+1

Though I have heard his reasons in the past, I still think proper 
release management (controlled by more than 1 person, managed by 1 
person ultimately) is needed, and I guess Miller's position at the 
moment doesn't allow that.

>> I've seen forks in other FLOSS projects, and they're never pretty.
>
> But are they necessary? If they're necessary, then whether they're 
> pretty
> or not is not a question.

When they have been absolutely necessary (the codebase was diverging 
wildly), prettiness wasn't on anyone's agenda, no.

>> May I suggest, that while we consider these issues, we also consider 
>> the
>> appointment of a release manager? I know that Tim's work on dev39 is

> ow the question is: what will the release manager do when Pd/MSP 0.40
> comes out? Because I'm not certain at all what Tim will/would do with a
> Pd/MSP 0.40 on his hands.

It shouldn't have to come down to being his decision. In a 'normal' 
FLOSS process, releases don't just 'come out'.

> And then I wonder who would volunteer for merging stuff while not 
> dropping
> any features from either branch.

My guess : no one.

> What else should the release manager do? There could be "stabilized"
> versions of the devel branch, that is, for each big release, a branch 
> made
> only for bugfixes, but I don't think we can afford that luxury right 
> now,
> unless someone volunteers for that, and that's certainly not certain.

I agree. My point is that release management is preferable to forking, 
every day, but I admit PD may be too fragmented already.

Perhaps I'm missing blocks of history here, but it seems to me that it 
shouldn't be impossible to achieve convention between branches, 
provided there is an initial setup effort. Count me in, FWIW.

Cheers,

David