dolfin team mailing list archive

["Dag Lindbo" <dag@xxxxxxxx>]

> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 02:12:30PM +0200, Johan Jansson wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 01:29:02PM +0200, Anders Logg wrote:
>> > I'm not so sure I like the branched development we have now with a
>> > separate dolfin-kth. The consequence of this development is that the
>> > core development takes place in the main dolfin tree (mostly by Garth
>> > and myself), while you work on your own things in dolfin-kth.
>> >
>> > If you instead worked in the main dolfin tree, you would be forced to
>> > keep up with and contribute to the development of the core
>> > functionality which I would like better.
>> >
>> > I think separate trees should be something that we create temporarily
>> > for testing and implementing new features before merging back into the
>> > main tree. It should not be something permanent since it would then in
>> > practice be a fork.
>> >
>> > /Anders
>>
>> The main reason for having a separate, stable branch is to enable
>> non-core DOLFIN developers to participate in module development. We
>> have some students here at KTH using DOLFIN for example, and they are
>> probably not able (or willing) to be forced to contribute to core
>> development. The result of simultaneous core and module development
>> for them is time wasted and perhaps eventually project failure because
>> they never get started with their main work
>
> How about just working against the latest stable release: DOLFIN x.y.z
> (currently 0.6.2-1)?

That's what I'm doing. I install a new stable when released and then port
my code to cope with changes. However, I'm not really writing modules
within the source tree - I write solvers that link with DOLFIN libs. For
me this works fine, and I imagine it should work fine for other students.
The exception would be if a group worked on the same module...

/Dag

>
> /Anders
>
>> How are you managing this with your students in Delft Garth?
>>
>> But sure, perhaps the branching does not need to be permanent. We
>> could define the main branch as stable, and then when we make changes
>> which might break core functionality, we make a temporary unstable
>> branch.
>>
>> I think we're doing ok on balancing core development and other
>> duties. If you try to do everything at once and overextend yourself,
>> then you usually lose perspective and creativity in my
>> experience. Perhaps some more time should be spent on maintenance, but
>> as I said, I think we're doing pretty ok.
>>
>> For the longer term, we should plan how to engage more core developers
>> (as well as module developers). There's much interest in FEniCS, so we
>> should be able to achieve that. I think we have some good ideas,
>> perhaps we can discuss those kinds of topics at FENICS'06 as well.
>>
>>   Johan
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