Today marks the start of our third week at Apache. We've been doing a lot of account set ups, exploring the web site infrastructure, exploring the migration issues we'll be dealing with and getting to know each other. This is good.
Up on the wiki we have a project plan matrix: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Project+Planning And one of those cells is for the dev work needed to get to a first build. Not "first release", which would require QA, IP checklist and PPMC/PMC approval, but first build which is a bit simpler: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Build-Dev-Plan I've seen a few threads on the list related to investigations of various copyleft dependencies and whether they are indeed needed, and whether there are good substitutes. This is good. But what I haven't seen is the higher level outline of how we are going to get to that first build. I think one approach would be to start with everything, which should presumably build, and then subtract. So check in everything from OOo into SVN, verify that it builds. That establishes a known state. Then verify the IP. Maybe use SVN properties to tag the files that were covered by Oracle's SGA. Anything not tagged needs to be investigated. Some things lead to requests for amending the Oracle SGA. When we get those, we indicate so in an SVN property. Some things will be GPL/LPGL. These get also get tagged with properties before being deleted. We continue to iterate until all files remaining in the repository have a property indicating that we've proven their provenance. Ideally, as things are removed, we do so in a way that we can always still build. So we start in a well-defined state and stay in a well-defined state. The above approach also has the advantage of allowing some degree of parallel processing, with multiple committers working on different parts of the project. Of course, if there is a better way of doing this, please let me know, or even better update the plan on the wiki so we document what the approach is. Regards, -Rob
