RE: Will the ROOT CVS Repository be a "real" CVS Repository?

From: Canal, Philippe (pcanal@fnal.gov)
Date: Fri Aug 13 1999 - 18:37:00 MEST


Hi,

I think that the current cvs repository plans from the ROOT team 
are an interesting step towards improving on the current open and 
collaborative environment but it should go further in a not too distant
future.

The cvs repository that Fons is going to introduce does have some nice
advantages over the current situation.  One immediate advantage is 
that from now on, any user will be able to easily access the source
code for any particular release, and not just the latest one as 
in the current scheme.  Another possible advantage, even-though 
this is obviously not going to be common, is to make it easier
to introduce bug fixes for older versions.  This might be necessary
for some experiments that are soon going to need to select a production
release from which they will be more than reluctant to upgrade just to
obtain a single but important bug fix. 

It is an annoyance that you still need a binary distribution before being 
able to build ROOT from cvs (or even from cmz for that matter).  The two
reasons why the binary distribution is really needed are the dependency on
a specific makedepend and the need, on some platform, for additional libraries
(libXpm.a).  The source of makedepend will also be available from the 
same cvs repository, so this is not necessarily a show-stopper.  The Xpm
library could also be added to the cvs repository but either a mechanism
to conditionally download them need to be in place, either each distribution
will be at least 400K larger, even for platform that do not need the extra
libraries.

In the longer term, I agree that ROOT need to move to an even more open type 
of repository.  This is because the current model will only work 
as long as Rene and Fons continue to work full time on the ROOT project.  
As soon as [if] their availability decreases, the fact that only the two of 
them have write access to the main repository might become a problem for 
maintenance purpose.   I think movement toward this more open scheme is
more important that the exact solution implemented (cvs vs. BitKeeper) as long 
as more a modern, easy, open way for many developers to contribute.

Philippe Canal, Fermi National Laboratory, 
(pcanal@fnal.gov)



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