[Aust-NZ] Merging new developments into core (was: Finding a way forward)

[Jeroen Ticheler]

Hi Simon and others,
I'm reading through the interesting archived discussions you have on  
the aus-nz list (only just subscribed).
> Up until last month we've fed a lot of the code from the MEST back  
> into the trunk but there is a need to write proposals and get them  
> approved by the community before some of the later changes can be  
> committed. Community approval is a good thing but it takes time to  
> get this together and slot things in to the trunk - that time lag  
> would be a problem for anyone (not just BlueNet) - especially when  
> the priority for us has been features we need.

I'm getting quite concerned when I read this, as I feel that putting  
such procedures in place should have minimum effect on the normal  
development process. What it should do is start some discussion where  
needed and help to ensure that not just anything will get into core.  
Proposals do not have to be endlessly long either.
We need to find a good way of dealing with this, since delaying to add  
new developments to core may in the end be the cause of a fork if your  
developments deviated to much from trunk. Add to that the fact that  
you have moved on to new stuff, it becomes even more likely we'll  
never see the change merged back. :-(
At this point I want to have some discussion on the GeoNetwork  
developer list to find a good working solution. The most obvious one  
for me is to have sandboxes set up for those that develop new  
functions. This will allow a developer to just do his work as normal,  
but has the big advantage that others can see what's happening and can  
be informed on forehand. So when time comes to merge new code to  
trunk, we already had a chance to see the code (through commit mailing  
list for instance) and the process of a proposal and voting would be  
slimmed down a lot.
Looking forward to some good discussion on this.
Ciao,
Jeroen
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