kicad-developers team mailing list archive

["Dick H." <dickelbeck@...>]

--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Richard A Burton"
<richardaburton@...> wrote:
>
> > > p.s. do we have any word on this becoming the official development
> > > source repository yet?
> >
> > I'll contribute some time to keep it current with Jeanne-Pierre's
> > changes. There, it's now official.
> 
> Does that work the other way too? I.e. will the changes in subversion
> be pushed back into his code? Otherwise we essentially have a fork.
> He'll be producing one version of source and posting the official
> binaries from it on his site, and we'll be maintaining a separate
> release with extra stuff in subversion (with or without any actual
> binary releases). That doesn't seem good.
> 
> Richard.

If Jean-Pierre wants to keep control of his source tree separate from
the subversion repository, then we can merge his changes into our
tree. Call it what you want, fork, master, trailer, hairy bush,
oatmeal, or spoon.

You know as well as I do that the benefits of a subversion type of
system represent the only sane way to collect input from all the folks
that want to or need to contribute changes. I would argue that the
fact that we have not gotten an answer to our request to make this
Jean-Pierre's master means that the communications within the
"kicad-devel" group here, would be at or near a point of breakdown.  

However, making the repository be "the place", positions us all to
overcome and correct that breakdown. I don't want to be disrespectful
to any one, but I think this package is becoming too important for
some folks, and they want and need to benefit in a way that is
traditional for an open source project. That means multiple
contributors. Multiple contributors means subversion or something
like it.

In the end, the best way for Jean-Pierre to maintain control, is to
dove tail his changes into this repository. Otherwise his code could
be the one falling behind.