Re: The direction linux is taking

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2001 at 12:45:08PM -0800, Dana Lacoste wrote:
> why use the SCM if the features it gives are being supplied
> in a completely acceptable manner by the maintainer?
> If Linus is doing it on his own, and you're suggesting that
> he set the SCM up so that he does it all on his own in the
> end anyways, why should he add an extremely obtrusive step
> (SCM) to the mix?  Why should it be any harder on his day
> to day methodology that he's already comfortable with?

Merging is much easier.
Tracking of patches is much easier.
Access control is much easier.
Etc.

> (If, on the other hand, we allowed multiple committers
> and access-controlled maintainer lists, then SCM would
> be beautiful!  but this isn't FreeBSD :) :) :) :) :)

Actually, BK can definitely do that.  In fact, that's basically exactly what
we have on the hosting service for the PPC tree.  There are a list of people
who are administrators, a list of committers, as well as read only access.
The admins are also committers if they want to be, the admins also get to
control who is and is not a committer.

And you dream up as complicated an access control model as you want.  We
can do pretty much any model you can describe.  Try me, describe a work
flow that you think would be useful, I'll write up how to do it and stick
it on a web page and you can throw stones at it and see if it breaks.