Coordinating bug fixes etc.
9 posts, 4 voices
Andrew Hodgkinson (6)
465 posts
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Paul Vigay (85)
3 posts
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Presumably someone somewhere is coordinating all the efforts going back into RISC OS? I've made a number of bug fixes to ChangeFSI (and also !Boot) over the years, so I'd be interested in helping out on some of this, but I imagine it will be quite a lengthy task to keep tabs on everything so that a central ChangeFSI (for example) has all the relevant changes, rather than different people making different changes etc.? I'm not quite sure how it will all work, as I imagine some of the smaller developers might not want to get into things like CVS etc., so how do you ensure that changes all get included in updates? |
Rob Kendrick (86)
50 posts
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Paul Vigay (85) wrote: > I'm not quite sure how it will all work, as I imagine some of the > smaller developers might not want to get into things like CVS etc., so > how do you ensure that changes all get included in updates? Err, this is precisely what CVS is for. Checking big changes in is stupid. It's designed to allow you to manage small, incremental changes. CVS, as well as Subversion, are trivial to learn. Anybody who is able to write code that deserves to go into the mainline will most likely already be familier with them, or be able to learn easily. I suspect that ROOL won't be giving write access to CVS willy-nilly to such "small" developers anyway - they'll be expected to send patches, or rely on telepathy. |
Steve Revill (20)
1361 posts
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Rob Kendrick (86) wrote: > > I suspect that ROOL won't be giving write access to CVS willy-nilly to > such "small" developers anyway - they'll be expected to send patches, or > rely on telepathy. He, he. We will have a team of code moderators who are volunteers from the community (including ourselves) who's job will be to take submissions, check them and fold them into the repository. Having done this job at Acorn/Pace, I can tell you it's amazing how many people give you their work and you find it doesn't even build correctly! Submissions might either be sent directly to us (e.g. someone emails us an archive of their modified sources) or indirectly (e.g. someone in RISC OS land sees a useful modified version of the Flibble module - that came from the shared sources in the first place - available and tells us about it). If you are interested in becoming a moderator, get in touch. It doesn't have to be for the full repository; you may have a favourite component or set of components that you can look after. |
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Rob Kendrick (86)
50 posts
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Steve Revill (20) wrote: > If you are interested in becoming a moderator, get in touch. It doesn't > have to be for the full repository; you may have a favourite component > or set of components that you can look after. I'm afraid I can't commit to help at all until I see even a draft version of the licence agreement that I'll be held to for just looking at the sources. Also: I don't own a recent enough copy of Norcroft, I suspect. |
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Steve Revill (20)
1361 posts
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Rob Kendrick (86) wrote: > Also: I don't own a recent enough copy of Norcroft, I suspect. Very soon now, we intend to start selling the Castle C/C++ package at considerably less than you would have been able to buy it in the past. That should be a real boost to all the people who don't have the tools and want to build the shared sources (because most of the sources need that toolset). Sadly, we can't give them away for free but I don't remember anyone saying we can't have /any/ commercial software on RISC OS... :) |
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Rob Kendrick (86)
50 posts
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Steve Revill (20) wrote: > Rob Kendrick (86) wrote: >> Also: I don't own a recent enough copy of Norcroft, I suspect. > > Very soon now, we intend to start selling the Castle C/C++ package at > considerably less than you would have been able to buy it in the past. > That should be a real boost to all the people who don't have the tools > and want to build the shared sources (because most of the sources need > that toolset). Unless it's a penny, I doubt I'll be interested - I'm happy to donate time, but I'm not willing to expend cash on somthing that'd essentially be a hobby or vague interest thing. > Sadly, we can't give them away for free but I don't remember anyone > saying we can't have /any/ commercial software on RISC OS... :) Is this still because of your agreement with ARM and Codemist? Given that ARM nolonger use or sell Norcroft, and existing Norcrofts are incompatible with with ARM's new EDG-based compilers and EABI, and that Codemist nolonger sell compiler frontends, it might be worth talking to them about that. Certainly a Linux-based version would be handy. |
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Paul Vigay (85)
3 posts
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Rob Kendrick (86) wrote: > Err, this is precisely what CVS is for. Checking big changes in is > stupid. It's designed to allow you to manage small, incremental > changes. CVS, as well as Subversion, are trivial to learn. They may be trivial to people like you and I - but certainly not to the average RISC OS 'dabbler'. I know many people who might be able to diagnose and spot a bug in a line of BASIC code, so a quick 'bodge' to a line in ChangeFSI is a mile away from installing and using CVS etc. I fear that this may put off some people who have nonetheless found minor bugs in pieces of software. I'd have said that we don't want to alienate anyone from helping. |
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Rob Kendrick (86)
50 posts
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Paul Vigay (85) wrote: > They may be trivial to people like you and I - but certainly not to the > average RISC OS 'dabbler'. I know many people who might be able to > diagnose and spot a bug in a line of BASIC code, so a quick 'bodge' to a > line in ChangeFSI is a mile away from installing and using CVS etc. > > I fear that this may put off some people who have nonetheless found > minor bugs in pieces of software. I'd have said that we don't want to > alienate anyone from helping. Again, it's not as if you're going to give that type of person write access to the repository, and I assume the source will be available as a tarball or similar for downloading it, so this is a complete non-issue. |
