Dirkjan Ochtman wrote:
On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 17:52, Michael Foord <mfoord@python.org> wrote:
What is the risk of going ahead with a broken system?
The crux of the matter is that building Python for Windows could break if someone accidentally commits the wrong line-endings for a few specific files (Visual Studio project and configuration files - do I understand correctly?). If this happens, how hard a job would it be to find and fix the problem?
That wouldn't happen, because we'd have pre-push hooks in place that prevent changesets changing something for the worse from going into the central repository. That places a certain burden on people who run into these issues to fix up their changesets, though. The argument was, I think, that it's not reasonable for Windows developers to have to spend time on fixing up their own changesets when other developers don't have to do so.
The risk *seems* reasonably low, people on non-Windows platforms are unlikely to touch those files and they are unlikely to be edited by hand, and if the cost of fixing the problem is low it seems reasonable to migrate earlier rather than later.
IMO the risk is negligible, due to the aformentioned precautions.
Would it help for the PSF to pay someone to do the necessary testing + coding to ensure the problem is fixed and is there a likely person we could contract?
Matt Mackall, the founder of Mercurial, might be available. Martin Geisler is the person who did most of the work on the eol extension so far, including getting a Windows laptop from his university to try some things, but I'm not sure he's available either. I could ask around, though, if the PSF thinks spending money on this is worthwhile.
The PSF would look to the developer community for advice on this issue, but if it's holding the DVCS switch up I can't think of many objections to spending a modest sum to remove the issue.
regards Steve
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