Alan, I see your points. I agree with you and I am +1. (incubator/subproject is not important to me) You mentioned that hive is cautious about checking changes into the meta-store. I would not say we (hive) are cautious. Hive is getting pulled in many people in many directions (this is a good thing). But the number of people that can technically review patches might be burdened at times by the number of them. Ideally, I would think hive committers are going to be active (and probably would have commit) on howl or is it going to be the burden of howl track pig and hive until hive drops /metastore and begins using howl? I am just curious about what you think the time line looks like (IE how long howl will be in the incubator for) (rought guess of course)
I hope that Hive committers do become active in Howl, and we will be starting with Paul as a committer and John as a mentor. At least so far the Howl developers have taken up the burden of tracking the changes in Hive, since, as you mention, Hive committers are busy and Howl developers have had the motivation to get it done.
As far as how long it will take, prognostication has never been my strength. But I would think it would take at least a year for Howl to mature to the point that Hive would be willing to trust it as its metastore or its development would slow to the point that it could pull the metastore code from Hive.
Alan.
Thank you, Edward
