Re: Crossfire maintenance.

[quinet@montefiore.ulg.ac.be (Raphael Quinet)]

Mark Wedel wrote:
> 
>  I think any maintenance, and thus official releases, would be good.  People
> could still hack on their individual pieces (perhaps the maintainer would
> keep track of what each person is doing), without any problems.
> 
>  However, with official releases, it would then mean that these changes
> would then get put in the master source, so other people could use them, as
> well as having moderately new versions to make diffs of.
> 
  I totally agree!  The most annoying thing when there is no official version
is that some people write patches to the code but they are nearly useless
for most other people because they don't have the same version of the source
files.  If we all agree to write our patches on the same *recent* set of
files, then we won't see these problems anymore.

>  The problem with a file sharing problem is several.  First, those people
> with slow net connections, or who hack on unix machines not connected
> permantly to the net, have problems.  Also, for those that hack on school
> machines or public accounts, possibly would not be able to get the files
> via nfs, as you need to be root in order to use the mount command (and thus
> mount nfs partitions.)
> 
  If we want to use CVS (or only RCS, or any other system), there will be a
problem if we can't use a common filesystem.  The only workaround I can think
of is to have the files (source and deltas) available for anonymous ftp.
This way, if you can't mount the nfs partition, you can always use ftp to
fetch the files.  Naturally, those users will break the locking mechanism,
but if there is no other solution...

>  I would be willing to become official maintener/patch collector of the
> source, as I have a bit of free time right now.  I can't promise doing a lot
> of hacking on it myself, but I would certainly put out new versions and
> apply patches I receive.
> 
  Well, thanks a lot!  If there are no other candidates, then you could start
right now.  :-)

>  One thing that should be done, no matter who becomes the official person,
> is to archive up the version Frank was working on.  Unless it is considered
> better to go back to the last official release as a baseline.
> 
  We should merge the latest version Frank was working on with the latest
changes in the crossedit distribution.  This won't be an easy task...
I may be able to spare some of my time if I can help someone doing this, but
I can't do this myself (alone).  Comments and help are welcome.

-Raphael