[Koha] Koha releases - Clarification/correction

[Chris Cormack]

2010/7/7  <david at lang.hm>:
> On Fri, 2 Jul 2010, vtl at scls.lib.wi.us wrote:
>
>> From: "vtl at scls.lib.wi.us" <vtl at scls.lib.wi.us>
>>
>>> What seems clear from this exchange is that PTFS/Liblime believes that
>>> it is the responsibility of others to integrate their code into Koha
>>> rather than something that is inherent to the process of working on an
>>> open source project. If this is the case, then LEK and Harley are not
>>> trunks. They're forks.
>>>
>>
>> Owen--how is that clear?  When did anyone say that PTFS/LibLime believes
>> that it is not their responsibility to integrate the code?  I was at the
>> very same meeting.  LEK is a fork that PTFS inherited, yet I understood
>> from
>> the meeting that they are committed to contributing it to Koha, difficult
>> as
>> that may be.
>>
>> Nothing that they said about Harley led me to believe that they think it
>> is
>> the community's responsibility to integrate the code.  I believe that
>> there
>> are several people at PTFS/LibLime who understand the process and they
>> have
>> already put a lot of work into Koha.
>
> both sides will need to work to integrate this functionality (or re-write it
> if that ends up being easier)
>
> having either side take the attitude that it's all up to the other side will
> only make the problem drag out longer. It's very unfurtunant that this
> problem is here, but the entities that decided not to merge the code earlier
> are no longer around, and it's far better to assume good intent on the part
> of their replacements than it is to punish the reaplacements for the bad
> actions of their predesessors.
>

Hi David

I don't think anyone is punishing the replacements for their
predecessors, at least I am not. What I am reacting to is the policy
that came out at the liblime users group meeting at ALA. Which states
that code will be developed in isolation by PTFS, it will then go
through a testing phase, and then liblime customers will get it for a
period of 6 months. At that point it will then be placed in a public
repository for the rest of the world.

At no point in that plan is there any consideration for integration,
or is there any recognition of the fact that for the code to have any
value at all to the wider koha community that it would need to have
been rebased off master at regular intervals.
As in illustration, in the last 6 months of koha development, there
have been over 1000 patches added to Koha.

2010-07	019
2010-06	103
2010-05	203
2010-04	120
2010-03	146
2010-02	305
2010-01	154

So let alone the time it takes to develop factored in, code based on
Koha as it was 6 months ago, needs a significant amount of work to
bring it up to a point we could even begin to merge it.

What I am is concerned about is that PTFS are repeating the mistakes
of their predecessors. There is still no commitment to send patches
for the code in a form that can actually be applied. That sounds to me
exactly like Owen describes.

There is a rumour that a document describing the Liblime development
procedure has been sent to the Liblime list, it would be wonderful if
that could be made public so that our fears could either be allayed or
confirmed.

I would like nothing better than for PTFS to begin sending patches, or
making feature set branches available in a usable form for the
community to integrate, after all we have over 114 developers in the
history of Koha, they seem to have managed to be able to do it.

Chris