[Mailman-Developers] Plea for Help

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "SR" == Sean Reifschneider <jafo@tummy.com> writes:

    SR> However, I have been thinking that it might be interesting to
    SR> have a secondary CVS repository where changes could be made
    SR> and tested and reviewed by anyone.  Then, once changes were in
    SR> and we were confident about them we could submit patch bundles
    SR> back to the mainstream line.

    SR> Kind of like what was done with EGCS.

Another possibility is using BitKeeper as our revision control
system.  Please check out www.bitkeeper.com -- they have some very
interesting software that would allow us to be more liberal about how
developers interact with the source code.  I think it would
essentially let everyone on this list develop and share their
changes.  The idea would be that once there's consensus from the
community, one of us cabalists would integrate it into the primary
repository and "bless" the changes for the next official release.

There are three downsides as I see it:

1) BitKeeper is not free software, and Mailman's a GNU project, so
   that matters.  It may matter less than whether Mailman thrives or
   not at all.

2) We have no experience with BitKeeper so our infrastructure isn't
   set up for it.  Does it integrate with Emacs?  Can we easily suck
   in our CVS history, and perhaps as important, can we export back
   into CVS if we find it's necessary some time down the road?

3) Those who want to contribute will have to learn YASCCS.

I'd like to know what you all think about this.  I have no problems
with the requirement that our change logs be public (they are anyway).

-Barry