Subversion bureaucracy???

[Shamim Islam <sh...@poetryunlimited.com>]

Ok.

First off. I think subversion is one of the best things since sliced bread.

That being said, I think there are somethings I just don't understand.

Like what the pecking order is. What the criteria is for determining whether an
issue is applicable or not. And who makes those decisions.

That being said, I'd also like to say that it's really hard to understand why you
absolutely have to register in order to report a bug or even post a fix.

None of this makes any sense to me.

Especially, it seems to me, that even when you want to post a fix, you're politely
told that "It's ok, it's not relevant."

I'll wait to hear some answers back before I get into the details of this.

Thanks.

Shamim Islam
(Credentials withheld for the time being.)

--
Shamim Islam
BA BS



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org

Re: Subversion bureaucracy???

[Michael Wood <mw...@its.uct.ac.za>]

On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 09:46:42AM -0500, kfogel@collab.net wrote:
> "Shamim Islam" <sh...@poetryunlimited.com> writes:
[snip]
> The pecking order is mostly not formalized, and its existence cannot
> be proved.  The only formal distinctions I know of are:
> 
>    1. Humans who have net access.
>    2. Partial committers (people with commit access for a specific area.)
>    3. Full committers.
[snip]

What?  No AI bots?  :)

> > That being said, I'd also like to say that it's really hard to
> > understand why you absolutely have to register in order to report a
> > bug or even post a fix.

Well, you might need to register to create issues or add
comments/attachments to existing issues, but you do not need to do that
if you want to post a patch to the mailing list.  Of course it's
sometimes preferred to attach your patch to an issue where it's relevant
to an existing issue and the patch is not going to be applied
immediately, but there is also a patch manager who watches for patches
posted to the mailing list and then files issues about them or attaches
them to relevant issues if the consensus is that these patches should
probably be applied.

-- 
Michael Wood <mw...@its.uct.ac.za>

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org

Re: Subversion bureaucracy???

[kf...@collab.net]

"Shamim Islam" <sh...@poetryunlimited.com> writes:
> First off. I think subversion is one of the best things since sliced bread.

:-)

> That being said, I think there are somethings I just don't understand.
> 
> Like what the pecking order is. What the criteria is for determining
> whether an issue is applicable or not. And who makes those decisions.

The pecking order is mostly not formalized, and its existence cannot
be proved.  The only formal distinctions I know of are:

   1. Humans who have net access.
   2. Partial committers (people with commit access for a specific area.)
   3. Full committers.

Each group is a subset of all the groups before it.

Issues are prioritized mostly by me, with input from the dev and users
lists.  This is not because I have some magical power.  It is because
I have been doing the job, and no one has felt I've been doing it
badly enough to complain or start a recall vote :-).

This is pretty much how all decisions work.  People do stuff; when
there's disagreement about whether something should be done (or how it
should be done), then we discuss it.  If the discussion does not lead
to consensus, then we take a survey or a vote.  Formally, binding
votes are among the full committers; in practice, the full committers
may expand the electorate to include other parties whose votes they
want counted.

Have you read http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/HACKING?  It
explains a lot of this.

The system works best for people who are comfortable with
decentralized decision-making.  It can be a little disorienting for
those who prefer hierarchical structures.

> That being said, I'd also like to say that it's really hard to
> understand why you absolutely have to register in order to report a
> bug or even post a fix.

You mean register a username in tigris.org?  That's just the way the
site works.  It's read-only until you log in, then you can add
comments to issues, file new issues, etc.  It's a bit annoying, but on
the other hand, it means we can always find the right person to
contact with a question or whatever, so it has its advantages too...

> None of this makes any sense to me.
> 
> Especially, it seems to me, that even when you want to post a fix,
> you're politely told that "It's ok, it's not relevant."

I'd need more details about this complaint to respond.  For example,
if you post about a bug, but other people don't agree it's a bug, then
it's reasonable that they would discourage you from posting a fix.
After all, they don't think it needs fixing.

On the other hand, if there's consensus that it *is* a bug, and yet
people are still telling you it's not relevant, then that's weird, and
we'd need to know the exact details to understand what happened.

Please give more details.

Best,
-Karl

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@subversion.tigris.org