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

[Roald de Wit]

Hi Jeroen et al,

Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
> 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.

The process you are describing above looks very similar to what happens 
in OpenLayers (not sure if you had this project in mind when writing).

IMO, having sandboxes is a good thing. Besides what you mention above, 
it makes it easier to collaborate, stay up-to-date with and create 
patches against the trunk. OpenLayers has recently started having an 
add-in system for useful contributions that don't belong to the core 
application. A similar approach could work well with GeoNetwork too, I 
assume.

If there is approval from the GeoNetwork PSC, how soon could we see 
(amongst others) the BlueNet branch in the GeoNetwork SVN repository 
(maybe as a sandbox to start with)? How does the BlueNet team feel about 
this possible move? Does this sound like the 'wheels' that CSIRO could 
help out greasing (if resources are a problem)?

Cheers,

Roald de Wit

Software Engineer
roald.dewit at lisasoft.com

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