[M3devel] SVN migration, also promotion

[Olaf Wagner]

Quoting Dragiša Durić <dragisha at m3w.org>:

> And, I forgot to mention probable impact on public with more organized
> development of CM3. Most people, and I have few friends from C++/D world
> who look regularly at Modula-3, don't see our little community as too
> organized force. OSS world moved on since CVS became widespread.
> Separated web, no wiki, no tickets. Source history surfable with one
> tool, web (best looking in lynx, don't even try something else:) built
> with other, no real effort to document in depth.
>
> Few weeks ago there was mention about possible promotion time. With
> state of Modula-3 system we are all aware of, it is excellent idea. Only
> problem is - other people must collect plethora of information from
> plethora of sources. 99% of them will stop at first obstacle, and we
> have a lot of them ready.
>
> One example.. Yesterday, I came over Mr. Hosking's commit log on m3devel
> archive. All nice - except text went off right side of my screen some
> two meters. Most people will pass on - one more unreadable mail archive
> on the web. I've used CVS to read it, of course. But most people will
> not know alternatives, or not care - why would they if we don't care??
>
> Similiar communities are spoiling their "followers", but we Modula-3
> people are "it's all out there, you are not getting it? Pity!".

I think you don't really realize how much effort has been put into
getting everything into its current state and keeping the quality
standard as best as possible. This is because many people have
contributed their time and work and other resources. Elego, for
example, has contributed its machines, network bandwidth, administration
and support, and quite a few months of student's work; I myself have
contributed months of time to get the 5th release of CM3 running first
on one and then on more and more platforms since we got the sources
from Critical Mass.

In recent months I have been working on improving both the test
infrastructure and documentation/presentation of CM3, while trying to
support all other contributors as best as possible and coordinating
their achievements.

I don't think there are a `plethora of sources'; as a matter of fact,
all resources are available via www.opencm3.net and being integrated
more and more. There is the web presentation, the CVS repository with
anonymous and ssh access, CVSWeb, mailing lists, tinderbox regression
testing, trac (still in testing), etc. Soon coming are contributions
of CM3_IDE (which is a development environment that really integrates
different kinds of resources, and already running on some systems,
but not yet being approved for release by the owner) and packages
for CM3 integration with advanced version control and `project'
management. All this needs time and a lot of work.

I don't think it will be furthered by switching from CVS to SVN
or any other tool change.

I'm a bit tired of these discussions, as I don't think they help
the project on. What is needed is concrete work on documentation
and infrastructure. I'd also doubt that switching to SVN would
bring about a group of motivated and competent contributors
who have just been waiting for the CM3 folks to change their
version control to participate in the development of Modula-3.

If there really is the wish within the community to switch from
CVS to SVN, then those interested should build a team, investigate
the impacts and propose a migration plan. Elego and me for one
would need new server setup, the actual repository migration (which
should preserve as much information as possible), setup of repository
replication to two machines, integration of SVN into the regression
test framework, setup of SVN clients, update / rewrite of all the
repository access information and CM guidelines, and a migration
strategy for all the existing HTTP links in search engines etc.

If I should make an estimation for this project in a commercial
environment, I'd say it will take 3-6 months and cost a client
between 40,000 and 80,000 Euros (that's currently 60,000 to 120,000$).
I'd rather invest these efforts for other goals. If other CM3 users
think it is worthwhile to do, they should just do it; after all, this
is an open source project. No tool will be able to bring about more
organized development of CM3 simply by its use though. It needs
willing and competent humans to do this.

I should have used the time it took me to write this mail for working
on CM3 code and infrastructure.

Olaf
-- 
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