Project proposal: fbtoolkit

[Mark Reinhold]

> Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 17:28:33 +0200
> From: Dalibor Topic <robilad at kaffe.org>

> ...
> 
> assuming your concern is in figuring out what constitutes the main
> branch, and what constitutes experimental branches in a project like
> GCC, they have an extensive list of experimental branches (active,
> inactive, etc.) at http://gcc.gnu.org/svn.html .
> 
> Some of the branches are explicitely marked as not being considered for
> merges into the main branch, for example, while others are there for
> experimental features, backends, frontends, third parties distributing &
> patching gcc, etc. There are different rules for commits to branches,
> for example for release branches, the kind of patches that can go in
> depends on the 'stage' a branch is in, etc.
> 
> That may or may not be a suitable model for dealing with experimental
> work for openjdk projects, depending on what the people want & need.

I agree with the essence of what you're saying, but there's a bit of a
terminological clash rooted in the choice of SCM systems.

The above kind of model makes sense when using a centralized SCM such
as CVS or SVN, but with a distributed SCM such as TeamWare or Mercurial
a "branch" is just another workspace/repository/tree/whatever.  Once we
have support for open Mercurial repositories then experimental projects
such as fb-toolkit can create their own private repositories that are,
in effect, branches of the main JDK repository.  Just as in SVN-based
communities it'd be up to the maintainers of such repositories to stay
in sync with the master repository, if they so desire.

> Jeff Dinkins wrote:
>> ...
>> 
>> I know, these are really questions for the Governance board to work
>> out for the constitution. Is this alias a reasonable place for these
>> issues to come up for the IGB to take back for discussion?
> 
> I think this list is a good place for bouncing ideas around. If it needs
> to be more formal / when it needs to be formalized, we can take it to
> gb-discuss and continue the conversation there.

Agreed.

- Mark