Re: [Fwd: [arch-users] Re: Gud lord!]

[Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org>]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2003 at 05:00:16PM +0200, Juanma Barranquero wrote:
> > It's not optimal, and neither is working in an non source controlled
> > environment for developing substantial contributions.
> 
> No, it's not optimal, and certainly I don't remember having said it was.
> But even now there are people who does big contributions (I mean, not
> tiny patches of 5-10 lines, but changes of hundreds or thousands of
> lines) and who do not have write access nor (seem to) want it.

Indeed; I do a lot of development for projects where I don't have write
access (e.g., the linux kernel), and life is quite fine with a few shell
scripts to help me out.  Actually the thing which I find makes the most
difference is having at least read-only CVS access -- that's enough to make
it easy for me to keep things in sync and make patches; write access, by
comparison is rather a minor convenience.

[The time when I most appreciate having write access, actually, is when I
want to make a little random tweak (e.g. fix a typo), and don't have to
bother someone to check it in.]

I think for me, improvements in the standard patch-format to support things
like file renames would be at least important as a better revision control
system.  [Maybe arch actually addresses this, since I gather it tries to use
a very tool-oriented approach...]

-Miles
-- 
We live, as we dream -- alone....