> This of course points to another problem with the existing system - if a > patch > has been rejected, it should be a necessary consequence that the submitter is > informed with reasons - they shouldn't have to be chasing up Alexandre to > find out if the patch was rejected or merely missed (which happens often). > This is not to criticise Alexandre, but to point out that systems need to be > put in place to help him manage these things. Just taking patches of the > mailing list is not a sufficient mechanism. What is needed is a system that > records all patches, together with their current status (NEW, APPLIED, > REJECTED (with reasons), and whatever other status), informs the submitter of > any change, and does not allow for a patch merely to be forgotten. >
We actually have a todo on Jeremy Newman's list to build a patch management system for wine-devel, for Alexandre. Our hope was that we could adopt some of the CodeWeavers systems (we have a ticket system that's pretty slick, for example). However, it became clear that the requirements were fairly substantial (the tight emacs integration became our first clue :-/), and that project got back burnered. At the time we were discussing that, though, we didn't have many volunteer web programmers; maybe we should revisit that. Alexandre, would you be interested if folks other than Jer volunteered to help build such a system? With that said, I have to ask - what open source projects are you guys working on that don't suffer from these problems? I'm now a successful contributor to the Linux Kernel (tweaked isofs for Windows CDs) and it took me 3 years and countless dropped emails, despite the personal help of Alan Cox and Andrew Morton before my patch got in (and I have another patch, a minor bug fix, that I despair will ever see the light of day). I had a similar situation with MythTV (and the #mythtv channel is actively hostile to anyone mildly clueless), and the list goes on. Based on my experiences, I would say that Wine is a cut above, and Alexandre does a very fine job. On the other hand, I've often thought that the developer section should have a big FAQ to help explain how Alexandre works (notably the fact that he uses the absolute minimum amount of communication required at any time) <grin>. Cheers, Jeremy
