FAI

[Henning Sprang]

On Tue, 2005-07-26 at 17:28 +0200, Thomas Lange wrote:
>     > A more interesting question would be how we will share our code to work
>     > on that stuff.
> 
>     > Thomas, can we use the FAI alioth subversion for this? Is this already
>     > usable?
> 
> Access to the svn repository will be read-only but it should work. I
> think everybody could create a local branch for his own code. But I do
> not recommend creating a FAI branch currently, since the next change
> in FAI will be the splitting it into several packages and maybe I will
> also reorganise the sources. So, later a merge will be very difficult
> when someone is doing a branch now.
>
> Currently I have no time to start reorganising the FAI code, so
> changes to the sources will not be made until october.
> 
> But I plan to write a roadmap for FAI 3 and to discuss and prepare the
> reorganising of the code.
> 

Apart from that's a good idea to have a roadmap for FAI 3, I have some
problems with that:

1) "developers should be able to share code" was one of the requirements
for the new revision control system. If all have only read access, and
it's not possible with subversion, to restrict write access per
developer per branch, then migration will only help with moving
directories and files around, which, in my opinion, is not enough to
solve the problems we face if we want to work on FAI with more people.
And sharing code between each other by sending .tar.gz files by mail
(until then?) is much more than only slightly inefficient.

2) we have development power now to work on an important feature,
waiting until October is not such an interesting option. I think some
even need the rpm stuff as soon as possible, and for me, I have much
time now, which can change every week.

That's not meant as an affront, but the statement that we have different
needs than the information in your mail can satisfy, and I think we need
a solution for that.

I will see if svk helps with 1), or ask Henning G., how would, for
example, darcs help us to share the fai-rpm code until it eventually
gets into the FAI subversion tree. How do I share code with someone else
in that decentralised system? I need some place on the Internet to put
my changes, right? Does that mean I have to upload my darcs repo to an
http server after every change?
This is important, because, if the code is never shared, the
requirement that everything that should go in FAI must be tested can
never be met, so, by defintion, the code will never go into FAI if
there's no means of sharing it.

For 2) I have no real Idea - I think there is no option to wait 2 more
months to start with the work, it even has already begun.
So, if there's a working multi distribution FAI version in october,
before the reoganising starts, with or without the help of a version
control system, based on the current FAI code, what would happen to it? 


Henning

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