[gst-devel] cvs use

[Leif Johnson]

I'm pleased this hasn't turned into an all out flame war ; seems like a
nice compliment for the developers here. (Imagine this discussion on a
kernel list ...) But as Julien said it seems that there are indeed some
good and bad points flying all around.

On Mon, 03 Nov 2003, Benjamin Otte wrote:

> On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
> 
> > I can tell you *right now* that the main reason I'm not developing
> > against HEAD at this point is because it's impossible to even *get it
> > compiled*, let alone run it.  What good is it to try to get people
> > interested in developing against a library that says it's ok to break
> > compilation for three days without any warning whatsoever ?
> >
> If you're an application developer (like the Rhythmbox guys or Julien
> doing the player, that's absolutely ok. They're supposed to use the
> stable branch anyway. If you're a GStreamer developer you are supposed
> to run that broken thing as your main multimedia framework and fix
> every bug you find (or make someone fix that bug).

This is the situation I've got on my box, too. Since a few days ago when
the plugin changes landed, nothing has compiled, and all of my GStreamer
based apps are broken : sound-juicer, this moosak panel applet,
gst-launch (!).

I agree to a large extent with Thomas that we should maintain CVS HEAD
as a buildable and runnable branch, and check in major changes only
after discussion on the devel mailing list. Having discussions on the
devel list is also a good way to make sure everyone can try to keep
current on new stuff, without having to deduce the logic entirely from
the code. Reading code is one way of finding out what GStreamer does,
but I prefer having something in a natural language also. Programming, I
think, is more than just coding, it's communication.

That said, I'm not opposed to HEAD breakage, since it seems that the
branch method just hasn't been working all that well for us (as Iain and
Benjamin have both pointed out). Since our major changes recently have
each been adopted by one or two developers (error handling, typefinding,
interfaces), my suggestion is to develop with a local copy, make
patches, and then mail them to the devel list along with descriptions of
what you're trying to do. This could be a good way to get feedback
without breaking anyone else's builds, and will help people keep
current. We should check in things that break HEAD only if we have given
prior notice and get approval from the other developers---over the
mailing list, not just on IRC.

Didn't we once use the devel list for voting on development issues ?
Where is omega ! :)

leif

--
Leif Morgan Johnson : http://ambient.2y.net/leif/