[M3devel] M3 concerns

[Olaf Wagner]

Quoting Tony Hosking <hosking at cs.purdue.edu>:

> My comments embedded:
>
> On Jan 4, 2008, at 4:10 PM, Olaf Wagner wrote:

>> Ah well, Windows is a somewhat special topic. I even haven't a system
>> here for tests, and most of the other contributors don't use it either.
>> I was of the opinion that Jay Krell had fixes or workarounds for most
>> current problems (except for the missing LONGINT support), but I haven't
>> tried his distribution archives yet. It would indeed be very helpful
>> if we could setup regression tests on Windows, too.
>
> LONGINT = INTEGER on Windows, which is fine as far as it goes
> (everything builds appropriately), but not particularly useful.

I know that it should run this way, but pickles for example wouldn't
be exchangeable then, would they? Has anybody tested pickle support
for LONGINT yet?

>> It would also be possible to define a group of reviewers for every
>> change, but I doubt that there would be enough competent volunteers,
>> and I'm afraid that it would rather repress development of CM3.
>> And we really need to have development, as the underlying systems and
>> techniques change and we need to adapt to that. So I'd vote for
>> free commits for everybody, as long as there are not too many
>> contributors, and setup of continually improved regression testing.
>> And we don't need to worry, as all changes can be reverted; we won't
>> lose development history with CVS.
>
> One option is to have moderated commits for non-core developers.  After
> someone has earned the trust of the core developers they can be elected
> as a member of the core team.  This approach is used with the Jikes RVM
> (www.jikesrvm.org).

I wouldn't object to such a policy, though I don't really think that
it is currently necessary. But if more active committers do prefer
it, we can set up the necessary commit checks. I assume that Randy Coleburn
and you are in favour of restricted commits? What about the others?

Who would volunteer to review commits from other people? Would this
be a responsibility inherited by the unrestricted access?

Should we allow commits to branches and only restrict access to the
main line?

Olaf
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