Re: GOP-PROP 13: patch management tools

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 09:25:45PM -0600, Colin Campbell wrote:
> I'm solidly with Janek here, Graham.  As it sits, a person wanting
> to follow the trail of a (bug/issue/enhancement request) has to find
> the thing on two separate web-sites, where developers log in despite
> your comment above, using two different tracking numbers and
> possibly two different descriptions.  The curious person also has to
> read -devel and -bug to be sure nothing relevant was sent mail-list
> only.

Yep.  I'd describe it as three websites, though -- the email
archives being the third.   And even then, the discussion may very
well span multiple email lists (start off on -user, migrate to
bug-, then to -devel?).

It's a royal mess.

> No doubt it would be a wrench converting to a code management
> system, but I firmly believe the benefits from having all relevant
> material, discussions, patches and reviews, in a single place, are
> immediately large, and that although there is no way to quantify it
> but one can reasonably expect it, a synergy will develop where
> unexpected things happen as a result of seeing a bigger picture.

Any ideas on how to deal with people who only want to deal with
email?

Suppose that we switch to a unified issue+patch tool.  Then
suppose that somebody posts patch, an automatic email is sent out,
and I quickly reply to that email saying "nice idea, but it won't
work because XYZ, but you can work around that by adding this one
line of code ABC" because I need to go teach a class in 2 minutes,
but I knew I had the solution right away and wanted to let the
person know.

What happens to that email?

- somebody manually adds is to the unified tool?
- somebody tells me to screw off for not "playing ball"?
- everybody pretends that email didn't exist, and spends hours
  trying to figure out ABC?

For better or worse, the open-source community has a huge history
of development via email.  We simply cannot survive if we break
with that.


Now, some tools will automatically accept replies via email; we've
had mixed success doing that with tracker issues and Rietveld
discussions.  If somebody can step forward with a tool that
provides flawless support for email, I guess it's worth
discussing.

My vague recollection is that the google project tools have easy
support for email as long as everybody is using google accounts.
Not just "have access to a google account", but "is using the
email address associated with their google account".  I suppose
it's not so much of a big step to require this for lilypond
developers -- but on the other hand, I'm concerned that we're
getting too far away from the ideals of a GNU project.  I
generally don't have a lot of patience for the more hard-line FSF
people, but even I'm getting worried about the direction we're
heading.

Cheers,
- Graham