[sword-devel] Contributing to sword-tools repo?

Thu Jan 14 14:30:37 MST 2016

Troy,

I do want to say that I appreciate your leadership and dedication to
quality, stability, and robustness of the code. I think your judgment
and leadership in that regard has been excellent. When I was younger
and newer I didn't necessarily understand it all the time, but the
longer I've been involved in software, the more your management of the
project has proven itself out and has helped to hold libsword steady.

On the topic of git, you already know my feelings. And I think the leg
you stand on gets weaker and weaker with every passing email to the
project wherein someone mentions git. I used to understand your
position back when git was new, but I can honestly say it doesn't even
make sense to me, anymore. I, for one, have given up using or working
with new projects that aren't hosted somewhere in git. It used to be
the case that finding a repository on
(github|gitlab|bitbucket|self-hosted git|etc) would encourage me to
submit a pull request if I encountered it. Nowadays, not finding one
is a hard stop. I won't contribute to anything new that doesn't have
one. SWORD has become the only non-git based contributions I will
make, and in my role in the project of maintaining those parts of the
repository that I own. Others have voiced similar feelings
occasionally on this list. 12 million developers and 30 million
repositories live on github - please make ours one of them!

It should go without saying that your management of the project and
the VCS that it uses (at least between Subversion and Git) are
unrelated except where the choice potentially affects contributions.
You can continue to maintain the strong community and quality controls
whether you opt to keep using Subversion, use a self-hosted Git
solution (Atlassian offers the excellent Stash/Bitbucket Server which
supports excellent integration with our JIRA for interlinking bugs to
branches or commits), or a community site.

The ability to easily see new contributions, to give feedback on them,
to gate them, and for everyone to easily see the feedback and
standards you require are all present in the git ecosystem (not part
of git per se) as to only encourage the type of quality and the speed
of feedback that have helped make libsword so solid. The community of
tools surrounding git are meant to encourage exactly that practice.
But I could wax on at length about git, and that horse has been
thoroughly flogged around these parts, so I'll stop now.

I just wish you'd take the git plunge.

--Greg

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 2:12 PM, Troy A. Griffitts <scribe at crosswire.org> wrote:
> For those who don't want to go back and read the threads Greg has
> posted, and since I am the 'admin' mentioned for trunk of libsword, I'll
> make a few brief comments which I hope summarized those emails.
>
> I understand a move to git is likely inevitable.
> ____
>
> I like SVN better and I know many people think I'm crazy for that.
> Sorry, I do.  I find it takes me 3 arguments and 5 minutes to do the
> simplest things with git.  Sorry, I am sure it is my deficiency and
> inability to change my SVN-infected brain to "think in terms of git"--
> which I have often been told.
> ____
>
> Having said that, I have used git exclusive for SWORD development for
> over a year, in an effort to become more comfortable with git.  The
> git-svn bridge basically allows me to have a local git repo cloned from
> the SWORD SVN repo, create branches and switch between those branches
> and just do normal git things.  When I'm all done, a simple command:
>
> git svn dcommit
>
> will wrap up all my changes and commits and send them up to the SVN repo.
>
> and a:
>
> git svn rebase
>
> will assures my local git repo is in sync with any changes others have
> made out in the SVN repo.
>
> If you really like git and really can't work with SVN, then I would
> suggest the git-svn bridge.  It is really non-intrusive, once it's all
> setup.  I'm happy to share my setup with you if you need help getting
> started.
> ____
>
> There is a large distinction which should not be overlooked between git
> and github.  I don't believe switching to a crosswire-hosted git repo
> will make much of a difference for collaboration (as just stated, I
> already use git for SWORD development).  I appreciate the additional
> services which really enhance collaboration provided from sites like
> github, i.e., pull requests.
> ____
>
> This is the part I'm sure will be much less appealing and likely
> offensive to many of you.  I do believe that the SWORD engine is mostly
> solid.  It has progressed over a period of 25 years and runs on a ton of
> platforms and is really a fairly complicated and optimized chunk of
> code.  libsword is similar to other libraries like zlib or ImageMagik or
> graphiz; many projects rely on the library and changes should not be
> made hastily-- they affect many projects and it takes a long history
> with the code to know all the ramification of a change.  libsword is not
> GREAT, but I do think it is really good and does a lot of stuff, from
> syndicated module repositories and module installation management, to
> parsing and referencing multiple versifications, to filtering
> (transforming) from and to a number of markup formats, encodings,
> encryption, features, attribute level entry map parsing and retrieval,
> compression, supporting modular storage and  drivers, multiple search
> engines, locales, and more.  In a complex system used by many projects,
> it is not easy to contribute to a core library.  I review all submitted
> changes and give advice for quite some time before giving rw trunk
> access to a developer.  There are probably only 7 or 8 individuals with
> full access to the entire repository.  Others have access to individual,
> less critical parts of the tree.  People have complained over the years
> that I don't accept code when submitted.  I refuse submissions for a
> number of reasons.  Sometimes the code serves no purpose but to rewrite
> working code in a more en vogue way.  Sometimes the code introduced a
> 3rd party dependency that, while it might make things a little easier,
> also increases our reliance on a library we need to be sure continues to
> work on all the OSs and architectures we support; I lean toward doing a
> little more work if it avoids a 3rd party dependency.  Many people do
> submit patches which are incorporated into the code base, but it is
> usually after a few rejects with suggestions, and almost always with
> lots of conversation back and forth before any change happens.  I know
> this may seem to be against the free and open model of open source
> development, but I don't think it is.  Changes to core components of a
> project can be tightly managed while still giving entire freedom to see
> and use the source code.  I believe strict management of the libsword
> core has enabled it to survive and always progress (even if slowly) over
> our 25+ years of development.
>
> Huge parts of the engine are submissions by other individuals.  I don't
> want to do all the work myself.  But I do want to assure that the
> library continues to work for all the projects which use the library.  I
> feel it is my primary task as a library administrator.  I am a firm
> believer with Joel on Software that one should never rewrite a working
> code base ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html )
> but instead make baby steps forward.  I am very pragmatic.  You'll often
> hear me ask the questions: why? what's the problem you're having that
> you're trying to solve?  what can't you do with how things work right
> now?  have you tried your patch with a working frontend and how has that
> worked out?  Changing working code is always a heavy negative weight in
> my mind and you'll need to justify the benefit of a change with a
> heavier weight.  There are plenty of new features which need to be
> written that provide real world, end user benefit, to make theoretical
> changes because it is how project X does it or how University Y teaches
> it, not a priority for me or worth the problems that come with any code
> change.  I certainly want to provide new features to the users of our
> library and thus on to their end users.  I do not want to rewrite
> working code to rewrite code.
>
> I believe this is the long-standing complaint that brings people to say
> things like, the admins don't want contributions.  This is certainly not
> true.  I don't want many contributions offered without respecting the
> codebase which is already working and in place.  I don't want
> contributions from individuals who aren't willing to spend the time
> necessary to understand the complexity of the internals of the engine or
> the very difficult problem we are trying to solve with the engine.  It
> is actually a much more difficult problem than most people understand
> until they get into the details.  I do welcome people who want to work
> together, understand why things are the way they are right now, have a
> real world feature they would like to implement, and then work together
> to discuss the incorporation of that feature, test it out with frontends
> in the field and then submit a collaboratively designed and well tested
> patch.
>
> Many projects at CrossWire do have loose to medium submission policies:
> sword-tools, flashcards, swordweb, parts of libsword: filters, unit
> tests, examples, make system, bindings, locales, et. al., new projects
> are encouraged and near complete autonomy is granted to those projects
> wishing to become part of the CrossWire community to be managed how the
> project leaders see fit. But the core engine architecture, policies, and
> code are not loose.
>
> I hope that, even if you disagree with my tight management and
> submission policy for core libsword, this might at least gives you some
> understanding of why.
>
> -Troy
>
>
>
>
>
> On 01/14/2016 08:53 AM, Greg Hellings wrote:
>> Matej,
>>
>> Yes, I wasn't meaning to target you directly with my response. My
>> comments were meant for newcomers to the thread.
>>
>> --Greg
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 9:24 AM, Matěj Cepl <mcepl at cepl.eu> wrote:
>>> On 2016-01-14, 15:06 GMT, Greg Hellings wrote:
>>>> Based on the way this conversation has gone in the past, nearly
>>>> everyone involved except the project administrator would welcome a
>>>> migration to git. Even if it was a self-hosted git. But the project
>>>> admin remained unconvinced the last time the topic came up.
>>>>
>>>> So please, don't re-open this old sore spot. Sword is in SVN, hosted
>>>> on the crosswire server, and there it shall remain.
>>>
>>> Just for clarification ... I was trying to englighten a newbie
>>> about the situation.
>>>
>>> a) Maintainers of the Sword project have every right (legal or
>>>    otherwise) to do whatever they want to do with their project
>>>    in terms of VCS. If I don't like it, I can fork. The fact
>>>    I haven’t means, I am not pissed of enough (and I am not C++
>>>    programmer).
>>> b) I don't expect a change to happen, so I focus my efforts on
>>>    maintaining my own OSIS modules outside of the official
>>>    Crosswire infrastrcuture and so far nobody made me any
>>>    problems and my modules are occassionally even accepted
>>>    (sometimes ... CzeNKB and CzeKMS modules were still not
>>>    removed, but perhaps one day it happen as well; if not, I can
>>>    survive).
>>>
>>> Best,
>>>
>>> Matěj
>>>
>>> --
>>> https://matej.ceplovi.cz/blog/, Jabber: mcepl at ceplovi.cz
>>> GPG Finger: 89EF 4BC6 288A BF43 1BAB  25C3 E09F EF25 D964 84AC
>>>
>>> If we rise from prayer better persons, our prayers have been
>>> answered.
>>>   -- a Jewish prayer book
>>>
>>>
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