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

[Jeroen Ticheler]

Hi Simon,
Thanks! I was absolutely confident in you committing those changes at  
some point. It seems we can now try to facilitate the process quickly.  
I will make the proposal for a sandbox environment now.
Cheers,
Jeroen

On May 20, 2008, at 3:52 PM, Simon Pigot wrote:

> Jeroen Ticheler wrote:
>> 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.
> >  :-(
>
> They will - we've just been busy since the 2.2 release working on  
> features/fixes for BlueNet workshops :-). As a protection against  
> not merging changes back I've made myself post messages to the  
> developers group giving an overview of what we've been doing at  
> various times. Those emails were/are placeholders for future  
> proposals.
>
> I think the point of the previous messages in these exchanges  
> (leaving aside the mildly annoying statements like lack of  
> progress :-)) has been about forging a more effective community to  
> drive GeoNetwork development - a first step for that in AU/NZ is to  
> make the BlueNet MEST (with its embedded AU/NZ specific profiles)  
> available via an svn which leads to....
>
> > 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.
> >
>
> .....your suggestion of sandboxes as one way of dealing with this -  
> its a good idea and I've replied to that in a later email on this in  
> which Roald gave some details about sandboxes elsewhere and asked  
> specific questions about BlueNet.
>
> Cheers,
> Simon
>