[darcs-users] growing the darcs team

[Eric Y. Kow]

On Mon, Sep 01, 2008 at 16:16:38 -0700, Jason Dagit wrote:
> > 1) David Roundy will be the maintainer of the new darcs
> >   unstable repository.  This will be made available
> >   shortly at http://darcs.net/unstable
> 
> How will this work if http://darcs.net/ is the stable repository?

I think a symlink into another directory may do the trick.

> Are we going to endorse the usage of nested repositories?

Not as such.  The repositories will appear nested on the server, but
won't be used that way.

> Send in your haddock people!  Give Eric something to keep him busy :)

Yes!

See http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/DarcsDoc if you want to contribute
with just two minutes a day.
 
> 1) I think people would respond well to fun but intangible rewards.
> We could start with a thank you list every week or two weeks declaring
> how many patches each person reviewed.

Could be part of darcs weekly news.  The discussion on karma looks like
it could be interesting, and sounds like something that somebody with
scripting languages could contribute to.  I wouldn't go so far as to
convert karma into a more concrete reward, but maybe somebody with more
experience with karma-based systems could do research into this.

> Based on a, b and c, I would like us to adopt an official patch
> tracking system.
...
> We should make patch review more transparent, more organized and keep
> it simple.

So two things a patch tracking system should let us do that does not
work so well in email:
 * consolidate different versions of the same patch or bundle
 * see what is going on at a glance

As long as this does not impose too much extra overhead on maintainers
and people submitting patches, it could be useful.
 
> > 6) Eric will also be serving as the new release manager.
> 
> So many hats!  What does a release manager do?  How can other
> volunteers help you?

I have posted a list of hats that I would like somebody to wear in
this project

  http://wiki.darcs.net/index.html/DarcsTeam

Three hats I would like to see somebody wearing someday:

- an issue manager, somebody who is responsible for making sure the
  bug tracker is triaged and reviewed regularly
- a communications manager to take care of darcs weekly news,
  among other things
- a Windows czar, to make sure that darcs has nice binaries for
  Windows and to provide advice on Windows-related bugs

Of course, any hatless help you could provide would be gratefully
received.  The wiki always wants gardening, the bug tracker always needs
reviewing and patches always need comments.  But the biggest way you
could help is to claim responsability for one of these domains.

> I still wonder if it would be better to have three repositories,
> darcs-core, darcs, and darcs-contrib.

We already have http://tools.darcs.net

Splitting darcs-core and darcs sounds like a good idea in principle,
just as a means of improving modularity.  It is a good goal to aim
towards, but this may involve a lot of long term work.

If anybody is interested in seeing this happen,  I would suggest working
on some patches to help separate the two.  One very modest first step
might be to try separating our src directory into a src and core-src.
It might give you some insight into the kind of work that needs to be
done there.  It would be interesting to come back to this discussion
when somebody has done a feasability study of this sort.
 
> > We hope you'll like these changes.  Please let us know what you
> > think!
> 
> Gladly :)

:-)

-- 
Eric Kow <http://www.nltg.brighton.ac.uk/home/Eric.Kow>
PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9
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