--- "Peter B. West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Then there is no need for us to actually construct
development snapshots. The build process is not onerous, and it
doesn't take 12 hours to build.
I agree--and am concerned that the primary motivation for these snapshots is Clay simply not taking the time to learn CVS, the version control standard of the open source world. Commands such as "cvs checkout xml-fop" and "cvs update -dPC" are hardly traumatizing. All open-source workers need to learn them, Clay included!
Another concern is that since FOP 1.0 is not formed
enough yet, we might not want *everyone* downloading
it at this time. It may be to our benefit to continue
having only the "real" developers, i.e., those
CVS-literate, looking at it right now.
Otherwise you run the risk of the FOP-DEV ML degenerating into "How do I download the J2SDK?", "How do I build FOP?", "How do I get Ant to work?"--type questions. Let's face it, when you have the hurdle of you-need-to-know-CVS-to-get-at-the-code, you remain with a relatively highly skilled user base, a user base that doesn't need to ask these types of questions. This is what we are currently blessed with on FOP-DEV and, given the nature of our work, what we probably should continue with.
At any rate, FOP being orders of magnitude more difficult than CVS, those unable to understand the latter are probably not going to be able to help us code the former!
Glen,
I think you are being unnecessarily harsh here towards Clay, and Clay has been getting a hard time from more that one source lately. Clay's suggestions, as I recall, are aimed at making FOP as accessible as possible to the widest range of users. I and others (Victor is one who springs to immediately to mind) want the FOP development process to be as accessible as possible to the widest possible range of users. That FOP is currently so difficult is a thorn in the side of this subproject.
Even though I disagree with the feasibility of Victor's work, I applaud his attempts to rationalize the structure of FOP. Even though I disagree with the direction of the re-design, I concur with Joerg in applauding your efforts to get it moving again. (Note my stance of near-perpetual disagreement. I worry about it sometimes.)
Clay's comments are valuable, and Clay is actively contributing to making FOP a better product. I don't see that we want to discourage that. My concern about the snapshots is only that actually building and storing them is overkill. Clarifying what is happening on HEAD and where the stable release is to be found is a necessary part of making the web site and FOP itself more usable.
Peter -- Peter B. West <http://www.powerup.com.au/~pbwest/resume.html>
