[Numpy-discussion] curious about how people would feel about moving to github

[David]

On 05/27/2010 02:16 PM, Charles R Harris wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 11:06 PM, Anne Archibald
> <aarchiba at physics.mcgill.ca <mailto:aarchiba at physics.mcgill.ca>> wrote:
>
>     On 27 May 2010 01:55, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com
>     <mailto:matthew.brett at gmail.com>> wrote:
>      > Hi,
>      >
>      >> Linux has Linus, ipython has Fernando, nipy has... well, I'm
>     sure it is
>      >> somebody. Numpy and Scipy no longer have a central figure and I
>     like it that
>      >> way. There is no reason that DVCS has to inevitably lead to a
>     central
>      >> authority.
>      >
>      > I think I was trying to say that the way it looks as if it will be -
>      > before you try it - is very different from the way it actually is
>     when
>      > you get there.   Anne put the idea very well - but I still think
>     it is
>      > very hard to understand, without trying it, just how liberating the
>      > workflow is from anxieties about central authorities and so on.
>       You
>      > can just get on with what you want to do, talk with or merge from
>      > whoever you want, and the whole development process becomes much more
>      > fluid and productive.   And I know that sounds chaotic but - it just
>      > works.  Really really well.
>
>     One way to think of it is that there is no "main line" of development.
>     The only time the central repository needs to pull from the others is
>     when a release is being prepared. As it stands we do have a single
>     release manager, though it's not necessarily the same for each
>     version. So if we wanted, they could just go and pull and merge the
>     repositories of everyone who's made a useful change, then release the
>     results. Of course, this will be vastly easier if all those other
>     people have already merged each other's results (into different
>     branches if appropriate). But just like now, it's the release
>     manager's decision which changes end up in the next version.
>
>
> No, at this point we don't have a release manager, we haven't since 1.2.
> We have people who do the builds and put them up on sourceforge, but
> they aren't release managers, they don't decide what is in the release
> or organise the effort. We haven't had a central figure since Travis got
> a real job ;) And now David has a real job too. I'm just pointing out
> that that projects like Linux and IPython have central figures because
> the originators are still active in the development. Let me put it this
> way, right now, who would you choose to pull the changes and release the
> official version?

Ralf is the release manager, and for deciding what goes into the 
release, we do just as we do now. For small changes which do not warrant 
discussion, they would be handled through pull requests in github at 
first, but we can improve after that (for example having an automatic 
gatekeeper which only pulls something that would at least compile and 
pass the test on a linux machine).

David