Reorganizing development for scalability

[danielk]

Hi,

I've been lurking here for a while and have decided to get involved. I just started running LinuxMCE at home recently; I want to set up an Asterisk system for my phones instead of relying on packet8, and want this server to run MythTV as well. The MythTV integration in LinuxMCE could use some work, so that's my coding interest in LinuxMCE. But I've talked with Paul about setting up a public SVN repository and otherwise making it easier for developers to get involved.

The public SVN doesn't need to be sold as an idea, some of you have already set up a repository, but I would also like to make the build scripts simpler so that you can just do a "./configure; make ; make install" on the modules, and maybe a "make cdrom" to make an install disk. I also think a mailing list rather than a forum would make sense for developers. And finally, I would like to move to trac for bug tracking, mostly because it can be integrated with svn and show exactly which issues have been fixed and in which version they were fixed. This wouldn't impact the 6 month LinuxMCE release cycle, but it would make it easier for developers like myself to get involved.

Opinions?

--
Daniel Kristjansson

[tschak909]

honestly, why don't we use a distributed version control system like git or darcs?

given the immense size of the code-base, git may very well be the better option.

-Thom

[danielk]

darcs is not ready for prime time.

As for git, there is no trac equivalent that I'm aware of, and it would also be harder to sync with other code bases which use svn such as MythTV, Pluto, Asterisk, etc.

[chriss]

Daniel,

thanks for that post

But I've talked with Paul about setting up a public SVN repository and otherwise making it easier for developers to get involved.

What are the results of that talk? What is Paul's opinion about a public SVN? I already offered a public SVN over at this post (http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=2277.45):

some posts above I offered to setup a SVN repository for the sources. I'm surprised nobody commented on that. Did I miss something, like some repository somewhere else? Anyway, I did setup the repository by now; unfortunately it is nothing more than the 0704 sources from bittorrent with the following policy:

• anonymous read access
• authentication is required for modifications/commits (anybody who wants to become a developer?)
• Traffic limited to 50GB/month @ 2MBit/s (25 kBit/s when exceeded)

To be honest, I'm surprised that nobody responded to this post (or the one beeing about two weeks older). I remember a lot of people asking where to get sources, to submit patches and so on. However, none of them gave any comments
Now, this repository is ready to go with the 0704 sources, there's Trac up and running (though not fully configured yet).

Cheers,
Chriss

[hari]

To be honest, I'm surprised that nobody responded to this post (or the one beeing about two weeks older). I remember a lot of people asking where to get sources, to submit patches and so on. However, none of them gave any comments
Now, this repository is ready to go with the 0704 sources, there's Trac up and running (though not fully configured yet).

can you make the url public?

best regards,
Hari

[danielk]

Paul likes the idea of a public SVN. But he doesn't have the time to administer it. Last I heard from him he was going to set me up with root so I could do it, this was a couple days ago. But he also told me he had pressing issues to attend to outside of LinuxMCE right now.

I would like to get as much revision history as possible into this tree so starting from 0704 would not be ideal. I also contacted Pluto about getting the trees synced up. If possible, I may actually start with a clone of their tree and just add any LinuxMCE changes on top. I just talked to their LinuxMCE liaison, Razvan, today and he tells me that his tree is pretty much in sync, but the differences between LinuxMCE and Pluto's product are significant these days. Unfortunately, the e-mail exchange was cut short due to the time difference; he's somewhere in Europe and I'm in NYC.

Hari, did you make the URLs public? Maybe we can at least use the trac there until I get svn set up with a revision history. We don't want contributions to fall through the cracks.

[chriss]

I would like to get as much revision history as possible into this tree so starting from 0704 would not be ideal

I agree with that and I already asked for an SVN dump in my first post. If anybody would provide that revision history I will put it into the repository. However, I think this repository will only be a temporary solution so it should be possible to apply all accepted diffs to the complete revision history later on.
My point was to get the development going.

Hari, ...

Chriss, not Hari. 

...did you make the URLs public

But no, not yet, because I was waiting for a discussion like this one.

Maybe we can at least use the trac there

Uh, does it really work to host Trac and the repository on different servers? Didn't know that...

[chriss]

Hari,

an you make the url public?

sorry, I didn't make the URL public yet, because I want to avoid everybody grapping the code and we are ending up with several SVNs not beeing in sync 

/Chriss

[tschak909]

would you care to elaborate on why "darcs is not ready for prime time?"

or are you just talking out of your arse?

-Thom

[tschak909]

also, you might want to do a little bit more searching....

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/repoview/trac-git-plugin.html

you can take your foot out of your mouth, now.

-Thom

[tschak909]

Also, where do you get off saying it would be harder to integrate with other SVN trees with these methods? why don't you do a little research? People like you seriously piss me off because you just say things without actually either (a) looking them up, or (b) having the experience of extensively using systems that others suggest.

I happen to have both on my side.

-Thom

[teedge77]

 

everyone gets so crazy on this forum. i thought the people on the general hospital forums my wife talks about were bad.

[PeteK]

When we're all done with our little nerd fight, can someone please set something, anything up?  I've got an alpha/beta of the Insteon plug-in, and I'd like to start getting it out and getting some early testing done.  I've tried getting a hold of Paul over the last few days, but it sounds like he's got other commitments.

[billytwowilly]

as mentioned earlier, we should just use launchpad. We're integrating with kubuntu anyway, and it's what they use to track the ubuntu project, and it's free and it has great bug tracking via bazaar. Did I mention it's free and we can have it setup in an hour if there is an svn repository to pull from? Oh yah, and anyone can make a branch for themselves to play in?

[danielk]

I tested a bunch of revision control systems last year and darcs lost data. As did arch, the one with my favorite UI of the distributed revision control systems at the time. Darcs was also difficult to work with, a problem that arch and git don't suffer from.

I didn't know someone had written trac scripts for git, I stand corrected. But I still don't want to use a 0.0.1 script to link the revision control system and bug tracking systems. The whole reason I want to get involved is to make it easier for developers to jump right in and start coding without having to learn a whole bunch of new systems. Perforce, svn, cvs, rcs and ClearCase are probably the only revision control systems that fit that criteria. Of those, svn and cvs are only ones it makes sense to use for a new repository for open source development, and most projects that were using cvs have switched to svn for faster diffs and better branching.

If this is a monumental success with hundreds of active developers we can always switch to git or bazaar or whatever is best at the time later. The important thing now is to get a repository setup with all the latest changes and on a server that can handle the load..