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Re: On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere
From: |
Daniel J Sebald |
Subject: |
Re: On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere |
Date: |
Fri, 14 Sep 2012 17:19:50 -0500 |
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Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111108 Fedora/3.1.16-1.fc14 Thunderbird/3.1.16 |
On 09/14/2012 02:45 PM, Júlio Hoffimann wrote:
Dear all,
I'm here to purpose the union of these two important communities (Core
and Forge), to eliminate this strong separation that makes devs/users
lives much more difficult. We can make the GNU Octave atmosphere even
richer and minimize the losses, as nature does.
I don't see reasons to maintain two mailing lists, two disconnected
repositories, two communities. After all, we're all doing our best to
provide what we think is useful to us and to others.
Being concrete, what do you think in gradually absorb Octave Forge
packages into Octave main repo as subrepos? This would require an
effective collaboration to review the packages, to purge redundancies
(reimplementation) and i'm here to help, just to mention!
People interested in contribute to the Forge packages would just do it
inside the main Octave repo, inside a subdirectory. Forge maintainers
would have total access to the subrepo contributing exactly the same way
they contribute today, with the difference they would be closer to the
core, which is great.
The builds would be completely independent, we would just add targets to
the packages (make forge, make forge-optim, ...).
Please, put all the individual feelings aside and think as a community.
I'm glad to be part of it.
Best regards,
Júlio.
Júlio,
The OctaveForge repositories was a discussion item at OctConf 2012.
Opinions are varied, but I'll try summarizing.
First, I don't think there is the great divide that you are suggesting.
There is an OctaveForge repository separate from the core of Octave
for a few reasons. Probably the most salient reason is the fact the
whole project becomes difficult to manage if the core of Octave and all
the packages are combined into one. I think there may have been a time
when scripts were organized and combined with Octave, then it became too
much and people thought a packaging system was needed. Mailing lists
re-arranged quite a bit as well, at first being narrow, then splitting
into specific function which became irrelevant as some of the mailing
lists got little traffic. Development has sort of evolved into the
current arrangement that seems to function well enough for the time being.
There are three, maybe four levels of Octave code:
1) Core Octave written in C++ (i.e., compiled code)
2) Commonly-used, moderately-general m-scripts (i.e., interpreted code)
3) Compiled or scripted code related to user interface, whether that be
a graphics engine, GUI/IDE, etc.
4) Voluminous packages of field-related m-scripts
The first level needs to be extremely efficient and well organized code.
Being part of GNU software, it must also ensure that licenses are
observed properly. Up to this point, the main Octave maintainers (i.e.,
those most active and productive...and those most active has changed
over the history of the project with people coming and going on the
basis of available time) had to focus on levels 1 and 2 with blinders to
levels 3 and 4, otherwise they wouldn't have been so productive. If one
were to look, I think they'd find that the most active people on the
maintainers email list (emails and coding) are the least active on the
OctDev list, aside from an occasional post to clear up some detail.
At level four the packages are associated with diverse fields with
contributions from many. Efficiency, correctness and such just doesn't
get the robust scrutiny that the code maintained in the core does.
Before entering the atmosphere, i want to thank you all from outside, as
an external admirer. You all did a great job providing a free
alternative (pick any interpretation) for scientists explore the
boundaries of knowledge with no constraints on what they can or cannot
do with the tools in hand. Thank you.
Now let's dive in with the minds open, forget the past because it
doesn't alter anything...
I can smell two types of air. One is more dense, full in substratum, in
fact it occurs in deeper layers, close to the core where we can find a
rich environment with beautiful (parser) trees, birds, ... It's
refreshing. The second can only be smelled on high mountains, and lucky
are the ones who had the opportunity to feel this sensation.
As a adventurer, i would like to share this sensation with my friends,
but due to the altitude and faraway places they always give up in
joining this journey. I insist to them the air found in the mountains is
sublime, but it's hard to convince people when they are under the effect
of toxic gases produced in urban centers.
A bit off topic, but on the matter of toxic gases, society can make
urban centers that are livable, which helps preserve natural spaces. It
doesn't have to be one and the other.
Dan
- On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Júlio Hoffimann, 2012/09/14
- Re: On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere,
Daniel J Sebald <=
- Re: On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Júlio Hoffimann, 2012/09/14
- Re: On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Daniel J Sebald, 2012/09/14
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Philip Nienhuis, 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, c., 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Júlio Hoffimann, 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, c., 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, c., 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Júlio Hoffimann, 2012/09/15
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Júlio Hoffimann, 2012/09/19
- Re: [OctDev] On the union of two communities - The GNU Octave atmosphere, Juan Pablo Carbajal, 2012/09/19