On 11/30/2010 8:15 PM, Petr Rockai wrote:
I think this would be a good step in the process (external plugin ->
internal/contrib plugin -> (maybe) darcs built-in), a good test of the
community infrastructure, and a clear message that plugins are supported as
first class citizens in the darcs ecosystem rather than the past dichotomy
between "included in darcs" and "forgotten". Middle ground, I think, would be
useful and important to establish here, and the darcs 2.8 timeline sounds like
a great opportunity to do so.
The process does sound a bit over-engineered to me, and also like a lot
of (extra) work for quite a few people (including myself as a buildbot
maintainer). The dichotomy is, however, already defeated, given that
darcs-fastconvert is neither included nor forgotten. Going hackage (of
darcs) and exposing the darcs modules in a library has made this
possible, I suppose.
That's part of my point Petr: the dichotomy is defeated here by only a
single plugin. Can you name the next plugin that everyone should be
aware of on hackage? One plugin does not make an ecosystem,
unfortunately. The next potential plugin author that comes along, if
darcs merges in darcs-fastconvert, may be inclined to think that
darcs-fastconvert was an outlier as a plugin and that maybe the project
only received attention because it was a big enough problem to solve or
because it was championed by core darcs contributors.
The process I suggested is actually quite a bit simpler from similar,
real processes that I've seen in other projects. It is also somewhat
similar to, from what I hear, the process used by hg. It may be
"complicated" or "hard", and definitely requires extra work, but I don't
think "over-engineered" necessarily applies. I think it would be worth
the effort to define a basic "ingestion" process/roadmap for plugins now
(if that is what will indeed happen with darcs-fastconvert, and which
I'm still not convinced is necessary anyway) rather than deal with
headaches later on, when things actually start to become difficult and
process questions need answering.
--
--Max Battcher--
http://worldmaker.net
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