On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 10:55 PM, SF Markus Elfring <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am curious to know a bit more about related issues. Can any versioning > steps be improved here? No. Let me explain why I think no: I know scores of competent programmers. The basic rule is that all of those competent people work in different ways. They use different editors, often with different tab-settings. They write their code in different indentation styles. Some are vi users, some use emacs and some took upon the newest kids on the block: Sublime Text, TextMate, Eclipse. And some use old archaic editors like sam(1) still. Their workflow differ: some write code in the morning, where I am normally happily in bed sleeping. Some write code late in the night. Some will appear offline for weeks on end and then suddenly have a brilliant patch for a part of the code you are working on. Others meticulously track their record in many small patches. They work in different revision control systems. Some like tea while others like coffee. And so on. You can't enforce people to work in a specific way. And you shouldn't - it would be outright rude to tell people that their way of working is less efficient than some other way of working. Furthermore, you can't in general change the way a project is maintained and steered, unless it is your own. The power of Open Source is that you are free to fork the project, or to maintain a branch next to it with smaller changes. Git even makes it so easy it is ridiculous. But I have a strong opinion that the creator and maintainer of the project rules how contributions should happen and how the project should be maintained. Of course, there is a responsibility to this - if the project is poorly maintained it is harder to succeed. If the project is too poorly maintained, it will either die or be forked, whichever comes first. And I have a strong opinion that as long as you follow the basic rules laid down by the maintainer, you are free to operate as you see fit in that framing. Be it choice of editor, workflow or espresso-addiction. You may of course suggest, with a proper argument, why a certain way of working in the workflow is sub-optimal. But the opinion of the benevolent dictator is always right. Or you have not read enough Machiavelli :) -- J. _______________________________________________ Cocci mailing list [email protected] https://systeme.lip6.fr/mailman/listinfo/cocci
