Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!mailrus!ames!ubvax!vsi1!altnet!edc
From: edc@ALTOS.COM (Eric Christensen)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Handling Elm bug releases
Summary: The 2.0 gamma story according to D.T.
Message-ID: <364@altnet.ALTOS.COM>
Date: 8 Jun 88 09:13:28 GMT
References: <1080@bellboy.UUCP> <362@altnet.ALTOS.COM> <343@vector.UUCP>
Reply-To: edc@altnet.UUCP (Eric Christensen)
Followup-To: comp.mail.elm
Organization: Altos Computer Systems, San Jose, CA.
Lines: 71

In article <343@vector.UUCP> chip@vector.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) writes:
>No disrespect to Dave's wishes, but if 2.0 is better than 1.7, let's start
>there.  (Unless 2.0 gamma was a leak which wasn't supposed to happen.)  

Well, I've exchanged a couple of email messages with Dave about what the 2.0
gamma is, and where it came from. His answer is this:

	Dave Taylor:
	"In reference to your question about
	the 2.0 gamma sources, well, let's put it this way; just
	before I left HP Labs [more on that in a sec] I made
	available for HP internal use a version labelled 2.0
	beta and another 2.0 gamma.  If somehow a similarly 
	labelled version of the source has made it out of HP
	without my knowledge and explicit action, then I am
	of clear conscience in saying "do what you want with this
	renegade ;-) version", right?

	Besides, at this relatively late date in the game the
	myserious new source has been distributed sufficiently
	widely that I couldn't rightly stop it anyway, so ..."

So be it. However, there are several problems which are fixed in this 2.0
"renegade" version. It is Dave's recommendation that we take start with
the 2.0 gamma which leaked and work from there. In my opinion, it would be
a waste of time to work the 1.7 sources at this point. 

>After all this and a clean 2.0 is posted, it might be a good idea to add
>a note to the posting that all bug reports should be sent to the coordinator
>rather than being posted.  My guess is that there enough folks to pitch
>in and minimize the job for the coordinator.

Agreed! I volenteered to establish an RCS and/or SCCS tree to work from. I'll
coordinate it, and check sources in and out of the tree. That way we have a
controlled set of sources with full documantation about what has changed. In
addition, I'll also grant uucp access to the tree for a (hopefully fairly
small) group of people who are doing work on elm. That way we can minimize
the "your patch undid my patch" gripes that always seem to happen.

>Greg Hackney (hack@bellboy.UUCP) posted a message soliciting names for
>coordinator and other volunteers.  Can we agree that we should take him
>up on this offer, and let him put together a list of names?  Heck, I'd
>even be willing to let him collect votes if he's interested.

Absolutely! If we are to get elm back under control, we need 1 coordinator,
and 1 sub-coordinator who can take over in the event that the coordinator
gets run over by a truck. The sub-coordinator should have full access to
the master source tree so he/she can collect said sources in the event of
some disaster.
 
In addition, we need a set of "official" beta sites. By official, I mean people
who are actually going to test and maybe fix beta releases before they are
posted to comp.sources.unix. I don't mean elm "end users" who just want the
latest and greatest sources, but aren't/won't/can't contribute anything to
the effort.

If beta releases aren't controlled, we'll just get more and more confused.
That would probably mean the end of Elm, which is last thing any of us want
to see happen.

Comments? Suggestion? Gripes? Flames? I'll take 'em all!!!!

-- 
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| Eric D. Christensen     | Email: edc@altnet.altos.com  (uunet!altnet!edc)   |
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