Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/08/23/12:56:17
On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 4:46 AM, <gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu> wrote:
>
>
> On Sun, 23 Aug 2015, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via
> geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>
>> You are right in your motivations. We do need to pull in stuff from
>> the various branches. I have been doing testing of Igor2's pcb-rnd.
>
>
> And I am very grateful for your (and Britton's) feedback. The software got
> better after fixing bugs and implementing features you guys found or
> requested.
I am not trying to push you to change the way you run *your* fork.
>> The more functionality that goes into that branch, the more I worry
>> about project fragmentation. As cool as his branch is I really miss
>> autotools build and opengl shading.
>
>
> I think it is not a branch, but a fork. I think it's less of a project
> fragmentation. I regard pcb-rnd as a separate project, not as a branc of
> pcb. It's like gschem vs. pcb is not fragmentation for me either.
>
> Autotools: the system I have in pcb-rnd is superior to autotools. Since
> pcb-rnd is young, there may be cases when something doesn't work out of the
> box, but I usually fix them within a day after it's been reported. From the
> user perspective, it's the same ./configure. Of course if you want fancy
> things like install random parts in user home directories, that gets a bit
> more tricky. But honestly, did you try to install a different version of
> glib in your home using autotools and then compile pcb using that version?
> And did it work for the first attempt, without questions raised?
I have built glib on some non-x86 architectures and non-linux's.
> Opengl: I didn't delete that code, it's just disabled by default. As I have
> 0 interest in using or de velopen opengl stuff, it stays disabled until a
> volunteer comes and fixes it (when it becomes an optional feature). Looking
> at the current levle of _actual_ PCB user activity (see later), this is
> unlikely to happen.
I was not asking you to support it. I was just saying we need
something that pulls in your work with the original PCB so that effort
is not diluted over forks.
>>
>> It is nice to have a tool to do what you are describing but I fear
>> merging code with out talking to it's authors. They most likely have
>> reasons for not merging it other than "I was too lazy to submit a
>> patch." It might just be "i wanted testing done." or "the mainline
>> developer(s) drove me away back then." The problem is I suspect a lot
>> of it is "This worked good enough for me to do X but not reliably
>> enough for me to feel like it was ready for inclusion."
>
>
> A very important factor along the ones listed, at least in my case, is: "I
> either sit down and to it in my fork and I have a working stuff or I get
> lost in a trying to keep things nice and compatible recursion and will never
> have the actual feature".
Well. Yes the mainline of PCB needs a cleanup so that this is less of an issue.
>> We need a way to go down the branches one by one and
>> 1. Ask their owner about them.
>> 2. If the owner is missing in action do a review ourselves.
>
>
> 3. switch to a centralized VCS and start using it properly, in a real team
> work, so you won't need scripts and manpower to get a "merged" version. Or
> even a complete mainline the user can refer to... This is my personal
> opinion. I know a vcs flamewar will follow, and I won't join it.
Too radioactive for me.
> About PCB user activity...
>
> I started to work on pcb-rnd again on 12th July. I have a good working time
> logging system I use for my hobby project so I know that I've spend 135
> hours on it since. I don't regret any minute of it, since the new features
> of pcb-rnd are really useful for me. However, the past month also showed me
> a strange phenomenon.
>
> It seems there are only a few actual active PCB users out there. I don't
> have numbers, but I estimate there would be about 20 or 30 users wordlwide,
> who read the mailing list and really try to follow what's going on. The
> strange phenomenon is that many people are willing to express their strong
> opinion on what features are needed in pcb-rnd (or in pcb, on this regard we
> may consider pcb-rnd as a test lab from pcb's perspective), but when it
> comes to actually compiling and running a new version, only a very few
> invest the time. Although scripting won the poll of most wanted features for
> pcb-rnd, I found only 2 who actually tried to compile and run the stuff.
You are confusing geda users with members of this list. A lot of users
probably get gEDA via their linux distro. Why would they be on this
list?
> To me, this means even if there are only a few active PCB developers out
> there, proprionally there are even fewer active users/testers. There are
> occasional sprints in development, and there are usuallt 2 or 3 users
> reporting results.
We were more active a while back. As the software develops again and
activity is noticed things will grow again.
> There's probably nothing wrong with that, but if that's the case, I find it
> natural that developers find it more motivating to develope for themselves
> than for the "crowd" - at least, that's the effect on me.
That is very true and why we need to "Antifork" things a bit.
> In practice, this means: I am finishing the doc upgrade for scripting of
> pcb-rnd today, but I feel like this part of the investment was a waste: I
> didn't need better docs than the ones I had before. It is clear the
> bottleneck for pcb-rnd users was not the documentation either. After that I
> will go on developoing the poll winning features (since I need them too),
> but I probably will invest less effort in detailed documentation or
> tools/features/options I don't actually use.
I know I have been an absent lately and for that I apologize. I agreed
to be more involved in testing and I got side lined.
> I will conduct another experiment, tho: I will try to compile an
> as-static-as-possible executable for x86_64 Linux. It's not a priority so if
> it doesn't lead anywhere after a day I will probably give up. But if it
> works, there'll be a way for new users to try the stuff without having to
> check out and compile anything (and honestly this seems to be one of the big
> bottlenecks nowdays - even on Linux).
I use Gentoo specifically because I prefer to compile everything.
> Regards,
>
> Igor2
Evan
--
Home
http://evanfoss.googlepages.com/
Work
http://forge.abcd.harvard.edu/gf/project/epl_engineering/wiki/
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