Greg Stein wrote:
On 10/19/06, Roy T. Fielding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Oct 19, 2006, at 3:32 AM, Geir Magnusson Jr. wrote:
...
> I'd like to ask that those who have asked for a release to assuage
> concerns about community health and capability to please read those
> 3 testaments from the mentors (ok, in Leo's case, 71 or so...) and
> please consider withdrawing your request for a release.
That's silly -- why would people who think a release (or at least the
release process) is a useful learning process drop such a *request*?
I could understand your concern if it was expressed as a requirement,
but it most certainly wasn't.
Right. I said it would be useful to see if the community can make it
happen. I know that *some individuals* can, but that is different. I
didn't vote, I didn't say it was a requirement, just asked: why can't
you pull together a *developer* release. Not TCK'd, not for Joe User,
but something more formal than "here is a snap of Subversion".
Something that developers in and around the Incubator can try. Or
simply for (Incubator) people to observe how you plan to organize the
community to get a release out the door.
People can already use the snapshots. We don't really just do a snap -
there's discussion about if we believe that the parts are at least
stable enough to do it. We break things - what we're doing is pretty
hard - so we don't do snaps when we know it's broken. I'm not trying to
toot our horn here, but this is pretty hard stuff, and IMO we're just
not ready to be putting something out there with even an implied
statement of stability or usefulness. This isn't about TCK - we'll
start that ASAP, and probably complete it sometime mid next year if all
goes well.
Look, if incubator people really feel the need to observe that process,
that's fine. It's clear the delivered artifact is not what matters, but
how the community does it. I can think of a few things that we could do
as a single-jar release that would require work to setup, and we can
go through the release process to produce.
Without seeing that, you could graduate to a TLP that may be fully
incapable of producing a release. Ever. I have zero indication that
the Harmony community can actually produce releases. Code, yes.
Releases, no.
I think it unlikely that it couldn't given the amount of decision making
the project has already gone through (which is the key thing, IMO), but
it's really hard to disprove your assertion - I take you at your word
that you have zero indication.
What is clear to me is that anything we do now will have little
resemblance to what we do to release 1.0, as there are tons of issues
that remain to be sorted, such as which platforms to support, how the
TCK integrates into our test framework and how we use it, etc. The only
thing in common would be how the community works together, votes
together and makes decisions together, and as you know, I feel that
there is ample evidence to support that those skills have been demonstrated.
Don't you think it would be a useful experiment for the Harmony
community?
While any activity like this with a young community is a useful
experiment, I'll point out that we're now literally experimenting on our
podlings. :)
I personally don't think that it would add any more information than
what has been summarized by the mentors and is in 18 months of mail
archives. However, that's my personal view, and I've had close contact
with the community. It's clear that you haven't come to the same
conclusion yet. Roy suggests that unanimity of opinion is just an
ideal, but it's one I think it's worth working towards.
Or are you viewing it solely as make-work?
To be frank, yes, I think it is make-work as it isn't in our plans,
although I'm sure that if this is required, we'll be happy to do it. I
was hoping that enough info would be provided by mentors to satisfy
people's need for information (as it did Justin). Hey, I had to give it
a shot, right? :)
That you're
confident that the Harmony community will not suffer problems that
we've seen in other communities around their release processes? The
decision is certainly the community's (actually... where are they? why
is Geir the only active Harmony person in this conversation?). I'd
like to hear the community say, "nah. we think that would be busy work
with no utility." Fair answer, but I will note that nobody has made a
clear statement like that. Talked around the issue, but never directly
answered.
This is an interesting notion, as I think that this "measurement" is
clearly going to affect the system being measured.
If you read the mail lists, the "steady state" of the project is that
we're heads-down on code, working together, happy with snapshots, and
working hard to get things integrated and completed. From afar, it's
reasonable to assume that we aren't that interested in a release right
now because it's never been mentioned.
Now, the Giant IPMC God is going to ask the project if it's interested
in doing something that it so far has shown no interest in, yet it's
clear that Significant Members wish to see it happen in order to give
the project something that it *does* have a demonstrated interest in,
namely graduation from the Incubator. What do you think the answer is
going to be?
Removing my mentor hat for a moment, and putting my community
member/committer hat on, I'm going to say "Sure! As you wish!", do it,
and then go back to helping get the JVM stabilized (so we can do that
'developer release' sometime in the near future....)
:)
geir
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