[VTK ARB] Fwd: Modifying VTK Journal to allow git branches

[Will Schroeder]

FYI- I thought this exchange, and the idea, are interesting.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Julien Jomier <julien.jomier at kitware.com>
Date: Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 3:15 AM
Subject: Re: Modifying VTK Journal to allow git branches
To: David Doria <daviddoria at gmail.com>
Cc: Will Schroeder <will.schroeder at kitware.com>, Luis Ibanez <
luis.ibanez at kitware.com>


David,

Great minds think alike :)

Luis and I actually discussed this idea a couple weeks ago for the Insight
Journal. We wrote exactly what you mentioned in a proposal to NIH. If
everything goes well, we should have some funding available to implement
this feature in the near future (September/October). There is a fair amount
of work to make this work but it would definitely be a very nice addition to
the journal.

We are always taking feedback and new ideas so feel free to keep them
coming!

Julien



On 8/17/2010 1:04 PM, David Doria wrote:

> Julien and Will,
>
> I have really been enjoying working in the new git framework. Creating
> git hub VTK branches have made it amazingly easy to work on projects
> with collaborators and perform code reviews.
>
> It seems like a natural addition to the VTK Journal to allow code to
> be published as a VTK branch on github (or elsewhere). The workflow
> for the developer becomes extremely easy - simply provide the journal
> a link to the repository and the name of the branch. The workflow for
> the user is also extremely easy - simply clone and checkout the
> branch. The user should be presented with a link to a "snapshot" of
> when the code was published (a known working version) as well as a
> "live" link where they can see new work. I have modified the code for
> many of my projects after my original Journal submission. It has been
> awkward each time (so much so that I stopped doing it!) to have to
> shuffle the files to stand on their own (the biggest issue by far),
> zip them and re-upload them to the journal. In my suggested method, a
> simple 'git push' would do the job.
>
> The beauty of this is that there is nothing special that needs to be
> done on the Journal side except allow the developer to select "upload
> code" or "publish a git repository". Then two new fields would need to
> be added to each publication to store the two github links mentioned
> above.
>
> A second benefit is that when people go through the submissions
> deciding if anything is worth adding to the mainstream toolkit (which
> I don't think actually happens at the moment), they can work directly
> on the files (after the original submitter gives them write access)
> and then simply perform a merge with VTK HEAD.
>
> A spin off idea is that you could maintain and distribute a
> "VTK-NextGen" branch that has all of the VTK Journal submissions
> merged into a branch. Maybe this would encourage developers to work on
> and with each others code.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Doria
>
>


-- 
William J. Schroeder, PhD
Kitware, Inc.
28 Corporate Drive
Clifton Park, NY 12065
will.schroeder at kitware.com
http://www.kitware.com
(518) 881-4902
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