[squeak-dev] A New Community Development Model
Andreas Raab
andreas.raab at gmx.de
Thu Jul 2 03:03:55 UTC 2009
[This message is also available on the blog at
http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/a-new-community-development-model/]
In the board meeting today we had a nice discussion about how to move
forward with a new community development model for Squeak. Here is an
overview of the model and what will happen next:
The goals
---------
The goal of this process is to get rid of as many hurdles as possible in
the contribution process. We are trying to enable the community at large
to improve Squeak, the core of the system and its supporting libraries.
To do this, we are adopting processes that have been shown to work in
commercial settings: The use of Monticello as the primary source code
management system, free access for the developers to the main
repositories, an incremental update process for both developers and
users of Squeak.
Repositories
------------
We will be setting up the following Monticello repositories:
* http://source.squeak.org/trunk
This will be the main repository for ongoing development. New code will
be committed here, the repository will be world-readable and writable
for the core-dev group.
* http://source.squeak.org/tests
This is the main repository for unit tests. It will be world-readable
AND world-writable. We encourage everyone to write more tests and commit
them, improve the existing tests and bring in entirely new test suites.
* http://source.squeak.org/inbox
This repository is intended as dropbox. It’s usage will depend on what
we make it out to be. The idea is to have it world-readable and
world-writable, too.
Developer access
----------------
The board will manage developer access to the repositories at
source.squeak.org. In the next days we’ll send out a few “you are
pre-approved” messages to people who have proven to be active developers
in the past in order to invite them to become a core developer.
If you can’t wait and absolutely want to be in on the action you can
register yourself at http://source.squeak.org/ and send message to the
board asking for access but most of the regular contributors (you know
who you are) will be invited anyway.
Rules of Engagement
-------------------
If you have used Monticello in projects with more than two developers in
the past you already know the drill. If not, here are some useful
guidelines:
* Merge often. In particular when you pick up work and right before you
intend to commit.
* Exercise caution. This is a running system and breaking it needlessly
is generally frowned upon.
* Restrain yourself. Getting developer access doesn’t mean you are free
to put in every pet extension you always wanted to have without discussion.
* If in doubt, ask. This is the corollary to the restrain yourself rule.
You’re not under pressure to ship a product, so you have the time to
send a note saying “hey, I’m planning to fix this old issue and it may
have some side effect here or there. Anyone having a problem with that?”
>>> I’ll add a Squeak-dev exception here: Any response from any
non-developer can be entirely ignored in this context.
* You break it, you fix it. If you change something you are generally
expected to take care of the consequences, though there are some
exceptions. If in doubt, ask ;-)
* Do good and talk about it. When you’re done with whatever it is you’ve
been working on let people know about it. It can be as short as a note
to Squeak-dev saying “hey, some of you might care that I’ve fixed the
long standing bug with xyz. Update and enjoy”
I think that roughly covers it. Basically you will be working with a
dozen (hopefully more) other developers on Squeak and we’ll all have to
learn how to make this work successfully.
Updating
--------
We are in the process of developing an update process that can work
seamlessly with Monticello. An early experiment is described here[1]. We
are evaluating alternative approaches, in particular the use of
Installer since there are some shortcomings when using Monticello
Configurations.
[1]http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2009-July/136870.html
Existing Work
-------------
It is important to note that we will be trying very hard not to lose any
work that is being done for Squeak 3.11. We will start with the package
set that was used in the 3.10 release, then we will issue package
updates to cover the missing delta up until 3.10.2. Following which we
will reissue any changes done for 3.11 into the repositories.
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