[sword-devel] beta module repo -- a rant

[DM Smith]

There’s no point today. We thought the purpose was to have true beta for modules and such visibility for those committed to module development. Chris L has been absent for quite a while now. It was largely, if not entirely, his module efforts.

We’ve a new and different team of workers on modules today. For the most part Peter is the pumpkin holder for the module repository.

Maybe use beta as designed. Maybe a policy to only allow things in beta for no more than 6 months unchanged. If we were to move the ones that appear mostly good out to the main and problems are found then that’d encourage improvement. Sitting in main does not.

— DM

> On Apr 16, 2015, at 11:13 AM, Karl Kleinpaste <karl at kleinpaste.org> wrote:
> 
> Today, someone came into #xiphos to say that Daily (Jonathan Bagster's Daily Light on the Daily Path) was both displaying oddly and causing hangs in latest Xiphos.  We poked around a while, coming to no sure conclusion because what I saw was clearly not what he saw.
> 
> Then I realized he had an old version, 1.0, while I have 1.6.  And then it was further discovered that 1.6 is available in Beta, not in CrossWire main.  Regular folks don't go poking around in Beta much.
> 
> Beta repo's Daily has been sitting there, waiting to go to main, since February 2010.  That's 5 years.  Well, anyway, that's the date on most of mods.d/* there.  Who knows when it last actually changed.  Maybe 5 years before that, for all I know.
> 
> The fellow upgraded Daily and poof no more problem.  He said it looks very different, and the set of verse citations has changed.
> 
> Some time back, I found myself wandering around http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Modules_in_the_beta_repository <http://www.crosswire.org/wiki/Modules_in_the_beta_repository>
> 
> What exactly is the point of having a beta repo?
> 
> On this page, there are reporting dates back as far as 2007, without further updates.  That's pushing 8 years ago.  A bunch are marked "known bad, do not test," as of 2007, 2008, or 2010.  Well, what are they still around for, if they're "known bad" and nothing can be expected ever to change that state?
> 
> There is one comment in all of 2011...and that's the most recent anywhere on the page.  One in 2010.  A small pile in 2009.  By far, most are in 2008.
> 
> The level of commentary on display quality consists of e.g. "Displays well in GS, BD, MS, SW" when Xiphos hasn't been GnomeSword since 2009 (6 years) and Eloquent hasn't been MacSword in roughly that long as well.
> 
> Tisch has a notation that John 8:53 is broken, so I looked at my copy: Yup, verse numbering skips from 11 to a gigantic 53 with no intervening 12-52, and yet this notation is 6 years old with no evident progress toward making Tisch correct.  And by the way, Tisch is based on v2.5 of the text; by comparison, my TischMorph is built from v2.7 of the same text, and it's lovely and available in Xiphos repo.
> 
> 4 out of 5 Japanese Bibles are noted, "hold for 1.6.2 testing" and yet we've got 1.7.3 or .4 released.
> 
> The page as a whole hasn't seen a significant change in 3 years.
> 
> Seriously, what's the point?  What does it mean to be "beta" if there is never movement away from that state, either toward release or toward deliberate abandonment?
> 
> Release them to main or kill them outright.  Purgatory is bad doctrine.
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