[GRASS5] A request for control

[Justin Hickey]

Hello Rich

Rich Shepard wrote:
>   1) Bruce and Markus declare an immediate feature freeze.

Agreed.

>   2) A development/experimental version 5.1 be opened.

Agreed.

>   3) I urge the adoption of the linux kernal development model.
> Specifically, only one or two individuals add any code to the CVS
> tree.

This confuses me. In the near future, I will be finishing my re-write of
the environment variable handling functions, and since this change is in
a library, I will need to update hundreds of files to accomodate the new
changes. I don't understand how I am supposed to submit these changes to
a single person. Furthermore, will this person have the time to review
and commit my changes along with all the rest? With CVS write access I
simply commit my changes to the development tree with a single cvs
commit command. I thought that was the purpose of a development tree, to
allow developers to commit their changes and have others test them.

The only way I see this model working is that the maintainer(s) would
have to be very dedicated to the system, making sure that new code is
committed in a reasonable amount of time. Since most developers of open
source software use their spare time for the project, it seems that it
would be difficult to find somebody that could make that kind of
commitment.

Please bear in mind that this is the first open source project that I
have actively participated in, thus my confusion could easily be based
on my ignorance of such projects. Could you please give more details on
how this model works?

> In addition, recommendations/suggestions/demands for new features are
> submitted to Bruce Byars at Baylor for a decision.

I agree that somebody needs to make decisions but I would recommend at
least a small committee be formed instead of a single person. The reason
for this is that if the single person is forced away from the project
for some reason (vacation, hospitalization, etc) for an extended period
of time, then development will not stall. Also, I think that the
committee should include at least Bruce Byars and Markus Neteler.

> This vision is needed to keep development focused.

Could either you or Bruce post this vision? I think it would be useful
for other developers to have a common vision to work towards.

>   4) We solicit need and use statements from the user community

Agreed. Perhaps just a simple webpage for comments. The URL could be
included in the README files, the INSTALL file, the welcome message at
startup, etc.

>   5) The GRASS core be separated from the front- and back ends.

Agreed, as you know I plan to take the first steps in that direction (if
I ever get back to it).

Anyway, just my 2 cents worth.

-- 
Sincerely,

Jazzman (a.k.a. Justin Hickey)  e-mail: jhickey at hpcc.nectec.or.th
High Performance Computing Center
National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)
Bangkok, Thailand
==================================================================
People who think they know everything are very irritating to those
of us who do.  ---Anonymous

Jazz and Trek Rule!!!
==================================================================

---------------------------------------- 
If you want to unsubscribe from GRASS Development Team mailing list write to:
minordomo at geog.uni-hannover.de with
subject 'unsubscribe grass5'