Eelco Hillenius wrote:
On 10/12/06, Endre Stølsvik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Noel J. Bergman wrote:
> Endre Stølsvik wrote:
>
>> My two (probably rather worthless) cents:
>
> Not at all worthless. What you posted is perfectly valid feedback,
and
> should be considered by projects. But does it rise to the standard of
> needing to be enforced?
In my opinion, yes.
This is because if not, every project might insist that "their packaging
is better", or just not think about it, and thus not follow the defacto
standard, if there is such a thing.
Why are there such differences now, then?
This is, if one would go for such an approach, a top-level decision that
shouldn't be up to the projects to decide - you're "apache compliant"
only if you follow this packaging. And it really isn't a big enforcement
either, it's just that it should be crammed in from the get-go, so that
the projects do think about it, and started out in line with the rest.
Note that I do not in any way suggest that the entire layout of the
system, nor the build system (!!) or similar should be enforced, just
the end-packaging for the "bins" (which really is what (most) people
download - they want "the working stuff", the open source aspect is in
this regard just a potential tailorability and important safety (and
hopefully quality) sign).
Imo ASF has enough written and unwritten rules. Following discussions
on this forum since a few weeks feels like making the transition from
a small young company to a large old one, where procedures and
politics are more prevalent than a more practical 'can do' spirit.
It's also often the difference between an dotcom upstart company that
probably won't make it, and a tried and tested, experienced company that
generates cash. Or whatever.
Sorry, no offense intended. I just think that 'enforcing' anything
other than the bare necessities is a bad idea. Whether it is the
binary packaging, whether to have discussions on IRC or distributing
incubator releases via a maven repo.
(This is beside the point, but what's the point in coming to Apache in
the first place?)
Things such as putting your jar here, and naming it in this way, with
versioning, and having the src-jar in the same dir, with the same name,
and some bla bla bla.. These aren't very limiting rules that will tie
you up in months agonizing to comply by. They are really just "know how"
from the good old company that knows, after years and years of doing
this stuff, what works and what doesn't. And downloading 5 tarballs that
all unpack differently just doesn't work for a company as reputable as
Apache!
This is stretching the dot-com vs. good'ol company analogy a little far.
But yes, I guess we do disagree: I get your analogy, and I still think
it would be right to enforce these simple things!
Forcing rules rather then
encouraging best practices is counter is hard to achieve and only
irritating for those who still don't agree even if they gave it a
serious thought.
Best practices could work too, if it was "this is REALLY the way to do
it". Is there any such document? (If yes, then just make it a
requirement, and you're there!)
A more positive approach - documenting, discussing
and automated support like maven does provide with it's standard
layout and distros - works much better imho.
Automating is just the thing I want, e.g. when downloading a bunch of
stupid dependencies that I don't care for at all, it's just that the
damn thing doesn't work without them. But automation requires a little
work upfront - that's the whole point. And the work here, is actually to
put them deliverances in those right holes, so that an automatic
process, or my idling brain, can do the thing without any further thoughts.
Regards,
Endre
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