Retiring from uClibc development

Manuel Novoa III mjn3 at codepoet.org
Sat Apr 1 19:49:16 UTC 2006


Rob,

On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 01:01:05PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> On Monday 27 March 2006 7:12 pm, Manuel Novoa III wrote:
> > Also realize that I haven't stopped my own development for uClibc.  It just
> > takes place in my own tree.  When we release something linked with it, the
> > patches will be made available and integrated.  But I can't ethicly (at
> > least in my code of ethics) justify handing out bug fixes to my employer's
> > competitors until necessary.
> 
> Disturbing trend.

That's ambiguous.... What precisely do you find disturbing?

> Query: is there going to be a 0.9.29 release?  If the objection is that psm 
> was destabilizing a tree that's trying to be cleaned up for a release, that's 
> an understandable objection.  If the objection is that uClibc is expected to 
> have every daily snapshot work because it no longer cuts releases (ala 
> buildroot), and using the last released version is no longer really a viable 
> option anymore, that's not really a very appealing model.

Thought I had been pretty clear.  My main "objection" was that psm was
treating trunk as his own branch.  Instead of working in his own branch
on several projects that touch tons of files in the libraries and then
merging those in several logical atomic commits when reasonably complete
and stable, he's been churning svn with lots of piecemeal commits which
get intermixed with bug fixes, other updates, etc.

In sjhill's case, trying to keep in sync with trunc has measureably added
to his development time for adding NPTL support to uClibc.  In my case,
needing a certain level of stability and auditability in the tree, which
is how Erik and I have always worked on uClibc,  I've been forced to work
in my own branch exclusively and to consider current svn trunk to be psm's
branch.  From what Erik has told me, he's been using .28 + patches for his
own work as well... although I know he tried building current tip last
weekend.  How can this state of affairs be good for developers or users?

As far as a release, I'd imagine there will be one after sjhill releases
the rest of the NPTL changes.  You'd have to ask him or Erik.  Cutting
a release may even be part of the contract.  As an aside, I typically
personally don't advocate cutting a release _unless_ there's a contract
involved.  I look at releases as an incentive for companies using uClibc
commercially to help fund development.

Manuel



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