On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 1:33:35 PM UTC-6, Tim Lebedkov wrote: > > For a beginning, you could maintain a separate installer so that people > > can actually try that it works and you get feedback. Then you can also > > gradually change further things, if this is required. > > I did, but everything I hear is that the changes will be merged maybe in 2016 > (and maybe not). > > What is your opinion as an active Vim developer? Are you OK with current > state of the development model or do you think it should be changed (for > example to be more like the Linux one)? >
Many open-source projects do not accept major new features or potentially breaking changes except at minor or major version updates. Vim is the same way. 7.4.600 to 7.4.601 can fix bugs. 7.4 to 7.5 can introduce big potentially breaking things. Your installer has the potential to break compatibility with old Windows versions which Bram still wants to support. So I support the idea that it should not be merged until it can either be fully tested, or until the next version increase, in which case we have a "last version compatible with Windows XXX" release still. Many of the patches to the list post within days, especially those that are bugfixes with easy reproduction/test scenarios and little risk of breaking backwards compatibility. > > > > BTW: What kind of 1000 lines code change you are talking about? > > If my changes will be merged with speed of 20 lines every 2 years, it would > take 100 years to merge 1000 lines. > I don't think number of lines has much to do with it. I've submitted 1-line patches that took months or longer to include, but I've seen patches that cover hundreds of lines get included within days. It all has to do with: 1. How much does Bram trust you based on past submissions? For first-time patches, I imagine he spends a lot longer reviewing. For Christian, who submits several patches a day it seems like, it tends to go faster. 2. How likely is this to break compatibility with some systems or existing scripts? 3. How *complex* are the changes? and finally: 4. How many people really care about this change? How much benefit does the change give? Bram has limited time, so he prioritizes things a lot of people ask for, or things with obvious benefit. Now, your situation: 1. You're a pretty new contributor to the list. Bram does not trust you (yet) as much as other developers. 2. New installers are quite likely to break compatibility with one version of Windows or another. And it's hard to get a large number of Windows installations to test on. 3. I cannot comment on this, I haven't looked at your patch. 4. Your patch makes the GUI for the installer stop looking "outdated". My guess is maybe 2 out of every 1000 Vim users care about that *at all*. -- -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "vim_dev" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
