[PD-dev] Re: PD-cvs Digest, Vol 21, Issue 30

[Thomas Grill]

Am 30.11.2006 um 01:56 schrieb Mathieu Bouchard:

> On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Georg Holzmann wrote:
>
>> yes, but when there are more and more branches every developer  
>> will have it's own one and it's much more difficult for new one to  
>> join (where?)
>
> Right, right, but then, how do we get out of that situation? we  
> can't. So let's concentrate on things that we can change.

I don't think we can't - let's go back to the root:
So far, it was perfectly possible to coexist in the devel branch, at  
least for my perception. Because of PDs weaknesses concerning GUI  
stuff, DD development is important for everyone, not just for three  
or so people currently working on the devel branch. On the other  
side, there have been many improvements from Tims and my side (under  
the vibrez title) for other parts of the system, especially audio and  
midi stuff, loader and idle callbacks, which partly found there way  
into vanilla PD. Obviously we can benefit one from the other, because  
these parts are quite separated.
The last days i was wondering why suddenly a lot of changes happen in  
many parts of the devel branch, although it was always relatively  
quiet outside the desire.c file. This makes the already discussed  
merging harder and harder. It's a "marginal" problem if someone  
volunteers to do the merge. It's not if i would have to do it,  
because of experiences i made in a former merge. The point is that  
Miller's PD has developed quite a lot in the meantime and the devel  
branch has been neglected in terms of incorporating these features  
from vanilla PD, also because Tim, who formerly kept things tidy, is  
busy with pnpd.
I think cleaning up (aka beautification of) the codebase makes much  
more sense once the merge has taken place, because then smaller  
incremental changes can be incorporated gradually much easier.

>
>> well, if more people are working on the same then it's also clear  
>> that sometimes there are clashes ...
>
> well, yes, when I work with Chun there are clashes and we resolve  
> them.
>
>> and it's also logical that Thomas doesn't take the latest cvs and  
>> maintains a more "stable" version for his product ...
>
> I understand that too; however, I haven't seen much action in the  
> devel_0_39 branch lately. It doesn't disturb me that Thomas has a  
> private branch,

There's really no reason to be disturbed because there simply exists  
no secret hidden branch... it's just that i let things settle a bit  
until i commit them, usually a few days, until new features are  
really confirmed to be working ok.
Right now there are a few important changes to the audio system  
pending, to make callback driven audio really smooth and reliable.  
Some code outside the portaudio-specific part has to be changed and  
i'd like to make sure that these modifications are indeed necessary.

> I don't necessarily post all of my thoughts on pd-dev.
>

Me neither, but some discussion about collaboration details would  
always be positive.

best greetings,
Thomas

--
Thomas Grill
http://grrrr.org