[M3devel] CM3 status

[Coleburn, Randy]

Olaf et al:

I think I share the concern you've voiced.

My observation from the M3COMMIT log emails is that Jay seems to be the most prolific these days with changes, but I find it impossible to keep track of what problem he is trying to solve.  Indeed, it seems he is working on multiple issues at the same time, but it is difficult from the posts to differentiate which issue goes with which posting, and this problem is compounded by the fact that my M3COMMIT/M3DEVEL e-mails don't always seem to be received in chronological order.

Thus, it is extremely difficult to know how to channel the limited time I have available into helping cooperate to solve a particular problem.

Maybe it would be a good idea when each person posts something to M3COMMIT or M3DEVEL that they tag it up front with a comment or reference to the problem the post is addressing.

Another idea, and perhaps your TRAC system supports it, is to assign certain problems to specific individuals who work the problem and report back their solution approach for some type of concurrence before going off on a tangent to solve.  This might cut down on some of the subsequent backtracking and reverting changes.  It would also allow others to offer constructive comments on the solution approach, even if they don't have time to actually implement the solution.  [In reading the posts, I'm seeing many places where work is done, then later someone disagrees with it, and wants the changes reverted.]

Even if one person is assigned as the lead for a particular problem, perhaps others could join in on helping solve it, coordinating their effort thru the lead person.

I really do want to help as much as I can, and we definitely need to grow the development support base, so anything we can do to foster teamwork and an up-to-date awareness of the major problem areas and proposed solution paths would be helpful I think.

I certainly don't want to squash anyone's individual efforts, but right now I don't think we're maximizing our use of the team concept.

Regards,
Randy Coleburn

-----Original Message-----
From: Olaf Wagner [mailto:wagner at elegosoft.com] 
Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2010 6:23 AM
To: m3devel at elegosoft.com
Subject: [M3devel] CM3 status

Hi all,

after reading a couple of Modula-3 mails again after some time of
'abstinence' I'm a little bit confused about the state of the code
and the direction of development. I see that several different failures
and ideas are discussed, but don't seem to get resolved; none of them
is documented in our Trac instance as far as I know. Some things I
remember offhand:

  o at least 2 different compiler/assembler problems on Darwin/Snow Leopard
  o current gcc not working on Solaris (?!)
  o stack walker code abandoned
  o possibly unsafe OS calls in new C code (this may be a wrong deduction
    from my side)
  o GUI input not working for BadBricks and other games (only on Darwin?)
  o no clean way for exception handling with current gcc
  o still alignment issues

I'm concerned that things get tried out, don't work properly for all
our target platforms, but are left then and not cleaned up and something
else gets tried. I'm not sure this is correct, it is just me feeling
unwell after reading all those mails.

Hudson and Tinderbox status seem to be mostly OK though, but I haven't
checked in detail (FreeBSD failing was a disk failure on my system
recently). But the tests don't cover all the things we should check.

I think it would be good to have an overview of the projects/work that
is in progress or pending and its status. For example, we've imported
a new gcc version, but that doesn't seem to work well on all targets,
or does it? If not, how are we going to address this? Use older versions
on some platforms? Can I read up on that somewhere?

I'd like to suggest to simply use our Trac WiKi to document the ongoing
work (everybody can get write access to that on request) and to record
all errors, failures and major tasks there as issues. This should help
everybody to participate and make me much more relaxed if I consider
the M3 emails (if anybody should care about my personal discomfort
at all :-)

Just for reference: the trac instance can be found at
https://projects.elego.de/cm3

Several of the committers should already have access, and using
the WiKi and the issue tracker should not be much more work than
writing emails. But the information will be easier to access then.

I hope to have offended nobody by this; I just wanted to make a suggestion
how to improve collaboration and discussion.

Olaf
-- 
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