Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB

[Peter Clifton <pcjc2@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2010-12-09 at 03:26 +0100, kai-martin knaak wrote:

> From the outside, geda/pcb development looks like a closed
> shop. Since I started using geda about 2005 no fresh blood 
> seems to have entered the circuit. Maybe I overlooked some 
> not so noisy fellow. But I get the impression, that you 
> were the last one to be granted dev status. The fact, that 
> the dev list excludes mere users adds to this impression.

Me and Peter B were about at the same time.. others have done great work
since, including the topological auto router, work on gschem's
internals, hatching code etc.., all Ben's PCB fixes. (Sorry to anyone
I've forgotten!)

Ineiev has written lots of PCB changes which have been committed
(probably many more we haven't accepted yet - SORRY!)

But no, no-one has recently been granted free commit access to the
repositories recently. We seem to be following more the Xorg / ...
model, where people email patches against git HEAD and one of a few
maintainers commit the patches.

Since we don't seem to have the manpower to do that well, we should
perhaps think about how we could work differently. Even if we were to
grant more developers access to the repositories, it would only be over
a period of mutual getting to know each other that it would feel "right"
for them to be pushing code changes without review.

(Note that even internally, Peter B and I typically post patches
somewhere for each other to review for non-trivial changes).

Take the exchange recently between Stephen and I.. a lot of emails to
clean up a few hundred lines of code. (And neither of us has got a final
patch yet!).

This is the kind of collaborative effort I've long dreamt of seeing with
the gEDA and PCB projects. Sure - either one of us could have coded up
the patch and had it pushed.. but I think we're ending up with better,
more likely correct code changes by virtue of us both looking at things.

This is a good example of how things _can_ work.


> Hope, you are not annoyed by this rant. Keep up the good work!

I'm not annoyed - its all pretty much true. Sometimes its sad that it is
true. I just hope I'm not too often the "dev" in question who was being
obstructive.. It was probably me being hesitant about removing the
CRASH() code in the default HID place-holder. (Which is what I think you
were hitting).

Whilst I have got _VERY_ deep inside various bits of gEDA and PCB, there
are still plenty of areas where I'm not so familiar with the original
design, and am hesitant to touch. gnetlist, gattrib and certain bits in
the very core of PCB fit into that category.

-- 
Peter Clifton

Electrical Engineering Division,
Engineering Department,
University of Cambridge,
9, JJ Thomson Avenue,
Cambridge
CB3 0FA

Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!)
Tel: +44 (0)1223 748328 - (Shared lab phone, ask for me)



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