On Mar 23, 2011, at 3:33 AM, Adam Barth wrote: >>>> While this is certainly technically feasible, it would add a huge amount >>>> of overhead to the process of performing a submission. >>> >>> How often do you submit WebKit to the Apple internal build system? If >>> that's sensitive information, I'm just looking for an order of >>> magnitude (e.g., every revision, every hour, every day, every week). >>> As a reference, the Chromium project creates one branch per day for >>> daily builds. >> >> I don't see how the frequency is relevant. > > The relevancy arises from the observation that the overhead is > proportional to the frequency. If we only submit WebKit to Apple's > internal build system once a week, then this approach won't cause too > much branch proliferation. If, on the other hand, we're submitting > every revision, then we're talking about doubling or tripling the > revision burn rate, which might not be desirable. > >>> In any case, I'm glad we've found a technically feasible solution. >> >> We've had at least one technically feasible solution from day zip: check in >> the generated project files. > > From my perspective, approach (2) is more desirable than checking in > generated project files because approach (2) encapsulates > Apple-internal build process to Apple folks, more specifically to the > Apple folks who interact with the Apple-internal build system. > Checking in generated project files, on the other hand, imposes a > maintenance burden on all WebKit contributors.
I believe Apple submissions generally happen with greater frequency than the rate at which new files are added to the project. Furthermore: When files are added to the project, the patch submitted must already run the tool to regenerate projects, and is already going to submit a patch, so the maintenance burden of the Xcode projects being checked in is low. But having to regenerate project files and then check them in on a branch adds extra steps, doing things that are not done in the normal course of development, and therefore may have bitrotted. I don't think you are going to get Apple folks enthusiastic about switching to a build system that creates significantly more work for us, on the basis that it saves everyone else a small amount of work. For that matter, slowing down the pace of Apple engineers' development would be a bad thing for the project overall, not just for Apple. Regards, Maciej _______________________________________________ webkit-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/webkit-dev
