dolfin team mailing list archive

[Johan Jansson <jjan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 03:12:02PM +0200, Garth N. Wells wrote:
> Johan Jansson wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 26, 2006 at 02:39:48PM +0200, Garth N. Wells wrote:
> >> Repositories are so easy to make, so just make some local ones to share
> >> developments against the stable version.
> > 
> > Ok, but then we're in agreement, since this is exactly what dolfin-kth
> > is. 
> 
> 
> >I think it's a good idea though to cc notifications to dolfin-dev,
> > because there might be changes in local repositories  which are not
> > only module-specific, 
> 
> Shouldn't these changes be made in DOLFIN?
> 
...

> I looked at the log for dolfin-kth, and couldn't see why most of the
> work (which is by Johan J.) isn't done directly in DOLFIN?
> 

It seems we're back to square one :). You said this:

"They work against the latest release. That is the stable version :)."

Our stable version is dolfin-kth. You don't point your
students/collaborators to the DOLFIN development repository, and
neither do I. If I'm working with people who work against dolfin-kth,
then I need to push changes they need there. Eventually they will be
merged to the development repository. Since most of the development is
at the module level, a merge should not involve much work.

It seems the argumentation is inconsistent. I'm getting criticized for
not working against the main repository, when in fact nobody is doing
that with their locally-run projects either (with other non-core
developers involved). Surely you are then aware of the impracticality
in doing so? Your plasticity project sounds very interesting, why
isn't it developed in the main repository? Why isn't Dag developing in
the main repository? The reason is probably the same as mine.

> I agree. What about more frequent releases then? Would that help? If the
> latest release needs to be patched to get something working, let's make
> a release.
> 

Either that, or a stable branch, which is essentially the latest
release, with important fixes backported. This is how Linux kernel
development has worked, and also Debian as far as I know.

  Johan