I still intend to submit a patch implementing thrift-c-glib, and then
maintaining it, but have been doing the work on github to clean it up.
It doesn't really matter to me where I do the work. We're just after a
pure C, leak-free code generated interface to Thrift, and continuing the
previous work that had been contributed seemed like the right way to get it.
Commercially speaking, Thrift is a key component of our service
architecture, so we have a vested interest in its stability. We pretty
much internally version our own thrift releases internally by taking
stable-ish trunk revisions, forking, patching and versioning, and then
building packages (rpms and debs) for the engineers to use here. We
used to do that with Cassandra, but now we are able to use the release
versions. For selfish reasons, I would be glad to offer our developers'
time to make Thrift builds and releases easier and more convenient,
although as you may have seen from our patch submissions, we'd probably
keep obstinately pushing to get the source build to work on stock CentOS
5 (see the autoconf 2.59 JIRA tickets).
On 8/12/2010 12:16 PM, Joe Schaefer wrote:
It has come to my attention that this project has
made no effort to maintain its list of PPMC members.
A best-effort was made by Gavin McDonald to construct
that list from the subscriber base to thrift-private@
which may be found here:
http://incubator.apache.org/projects/thrift
This project remains at a crossroads, and my personal
graduation vote based on the current trajectory would
not be favorable.
Apache projects are not cathedrals, they are bazaars.
The committers on the project are facilitators, not
gatekeepers. Every person who has ever submitted a patch
to either jira or this mailing list should be encouraged by
the existing devs to become a committer on this project,
but that never happens here. Instead people fork,
like what happened with c-thrift. That is not goodness
from an Apache standpoint; it would be far better to
create a sandbox in the subversion tree for experimentation
by community members.
Trunk should be treated as Commit-then-Review. It is
a-ok to break it, and anyone running trunk in production
better be prepared to deal with the fallout of that
decision.
Look, cassandra came into Apache a year or so after
thrift did, and they have already graduated. Part of
the reason why they have been successful where thrift
has not is because the Facebook devs there were not
allowed to place downward pressure on the community
the way they have here. The sooner this community
starts routing around them, the more likely this
project has a chance of real success at Apache.
I have asked for special permission from my colleagues
in the Incubator to experiment with processes designed
to get out of your way in as far as it is possible,
so there can be no excuses as to why Thrift is not
succeeding except for the fact that the devs have
not done an adequate job of growing the community.
I expect that permission to be granted very soon,
and would like those committers on this project
who still care about it to take advantage of this
special opportunity before it's too late. So far
Bryan is the only person I would trust to make an
IPMC member or serve as Chair for this project
should it pursue graduation, but if others start
showing more active interest I am more than happy
to consider them.
