PATCHES: Release Suggestion

[Jeremy Allison]

On Sun, Nov 12, 2000 at 01:47:04AM +0900, Kenichi Okuyama wrote:

> We also need someone who can decide which patch to attach&test
> first, and which to do after. This manager sometime have to request
> to patch creator to re-create patch for newer version. Or, apologise
> to them that they don't have time for applying the patch to current.

Well we're giving more people write access to the CVS trees,
we just added someone from HP last week.

I know about the "more bodies doesn't help" problem, but
as for integrating patches rather than large amounts of new
code, it actually does help.

> I think we need more and more test groups. As Samba have to face
> more and more to Internationalization, we need more people who can
> treat, know, and have testing environment for individual Locale.

This is a very good idea.

> For "more coder"... well, I rather would like to say
> "Stop adding new functions, clean up what you're standing on, for 
>  foundation is dirty and muddy now.
>  If we could clean them up, now we can focus on what's on
>  foundation. Once we're done with foundation, we can even build
>  Tower of Babel, or orbit elevators if we want".

Yes I know you feel this way. I'm not disagreeing that some of
the code needs cleaning up, it's just that I disagree about 
"stoping new development" whilst we do this. We don't have the
luxury of ignoring new features, not now we're needing to
integrate better with Win2k. The pressure for new features 
was what the TNG fork was about.

Now if you want to do this simplification in HEAD, not 2.2,
then I'm all for it. In fact I need to send you some email
about some of the suggestions you made earlier this week,
as they point out perfectly some design flaws that Andrew and
I talked about a year or so ago now, but were not able to get
time to address. I'm hoping you can help us do that :-).

> But ... well, at least, Jeremy believe that cleanup is not in high
> priority... all I can say is "add more people", though senior at IBM
> says that this will never works in book "Mythical Man Month".

No, I do want the code clean - but I also need to ship working
code without reducing functionality :-).

I know - unstoppable force, immovable object.... :-).

> And if more peoples will be involved, we need manager. This is
> always true, unless we can clearly divide code into units, by making
> clear about interface inbetween units. But dividing into units
> requires cleanup of entire Samba, which requires stop adding new
> functionality for once, which was rejected ....

Well we are trying to get new coders to concentrate on different
areas of the code. A new vendor who I spoke to this week (who
hasn't announced themselves yet, I'm sure they will soon) wants
to work on ease of use/management issues, and to do things like
split the debug logging functionality into loadable modules - this
is an excellent way of dividing up the work which I'm hoping will
mean more rapid progress.

Thanks for your comments, they're *always* welcome (even if I
disagree sometimes :-) :-).

Jeremy.

-- 
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