Re: [3rd attempt] patches for cvs on cygwin

[Charles Wilson]

Larry Jones wrote:

> Charles Wilson writes:
>
> > Is anybody listening?  Is this the correct list for patches?
>
> Yes, it's the correct list.  Have you read what it says in HACKING?


Yes.  "Is this the correct list?" was rhetorical.  Did you read my 
original message?

This patch has been in use for over 18 months by 2000+ cygwin users.


> > Submitting a patch to bug-cvs is the way to reach the people who have
> > signed up to receive such submissions (including CVS developers), but
> > there may or may not be much (or any) response.  If you want to pursue
> > the matter further, you are probably best off working with the larger
> > CVS community.  Distribute your patch as widely as desired (mailing
> > lists, newsgroups, web sites, whatever).  Write a web page or other
> > information describing what the patch is for. 


I did this over two years ago, but the web page is slightly out of date now.

> It is neither practical
> > nor desirable for all/most contributions to be distributed through the
> > "official" (whatever that means) mechanisms of CVS releases and CVS
> > developers.  Now, the "official" mechanisms do try to incorporate
> > those patches which seem most suitable for widespread usage, together
> > with test cases and documentation.  So if a patch becomes sufficiently
> > popular in the CVS community, it is likely that one of the CVS
> > developers will eventually try to do something with it.  But dealing
> > with the CVS developers may be the last step of the process rather
> > than the first.


this read as boilerplate to me.  Upon re-reading it, and your message, 
and observing the month-long silence on the list, it appears that is not 
boilerplate.  It's an excuse.


> The "CVS developers" are a small group of volunteers who have real jobs
> and lives -- they only do CVS in their spare time which, as I'm sure you
> know, is not nearly as copious as we'd like.


Yes -- but the number of "real" messages on the CVS mailing list is less 
than 15 per month.  I note that RMS got a reply within minutes -- but 
then, he's RMS. :-)

Point: it doesn't take long to say "Saw the patch.  Will review -- but 
it may be a month or two or three before I get the chance."  Given the 
amount of spam on the list, without even an acknowledgement reply, 
first-time posters like me worry that our message was completely missed 
in all the noise.

I'll take Michael's advice and switch the cygwin distribution over to 
cvsnt, pending feedback from the cygwin community.  Thanks for your time.

--Chuck

Michael Diers wrote:

> first, thank you very much for your work on Cygwin. Awesome
> stuff.
>
> IMHO, the CVS maintainers are extremely reluctant to incorporate
> changes. It is quite common that even trivial and/or much-needed
> patches will not make it into the distribution. I recall the
> FreeBSD people trying a number of times to synch their changes
> with upstream, to no avail.
>
> I would expect the folks at cvsnt.org to be more
> responsive. Note: cvsnt is *not* win32-only any more. Their
> forked CVS has loads of fixes and features that have been
> submitted on bug-cvs over the past few years. It's currently
> synched with CVS 1.11, I believe.