Hi folks, Ryota from NEC sent an email to the list earlier tonight about pushing their NEC Quantum plugin (currently hosted outside of the main Quantum repo), into the main Quantum repo. As some of you will recall, at the Folsom summit we talked a bit about whether plugins should be in core and if so, what the requirements would be around allowing a plugin to be in the main repo.
My personal feeling is that having plugins be part of a single centralized community repository is a good thing for a couple of reasons: 1) it simplifies and increases the sharing of code and ideas across different plugins. 2) it promotes a more cohesive community around quantum, encouraging people to contribute not only to their plugin, but to community projects as well. 3) it potentially makes it easier for someone to understand if a code change (e.g., at the db plugin base layer) breaks any particular plugin. However, for this approach to work, I think we need to make sure that at least one core quantum developer is committed to maintaining the plugin. Why a core member? Because being core represents a significant commitment to understanding the does and don'ts of Quantum, which that maintainer can help enforce with respect to the plugin code. A core developer also presents a commit to the community as a whole, which means other core developers will be motivated to return the favor and reivew/fix issues within the plugin. Obviously, we don't want these requirements to be so high that they discourage people from building and pushing plugin code to the main repo, because as I mentioned above, I think there are a lot of advantages to having plugins in a shared location. The core dev might be the primary developer of the plugin itself, or it might be an existing core developer who is simply motivated to work with the existing developers to help make sure the plugin stays in good shape and questions on the ML or launchpad get answered in a reasonable fashion. At this point, I would think that all plugins in the repo meet these criteria, with the exception of the Ryu plugin, as we haven't really had much contact with those authors since the initial contribution. What do others think about this topic? What's the right trade-off? Dan -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dan Wendlandt Nicira, Inc: www.nicira.com twitter: danwendlandt ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~netstack Post to : netstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~netstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
