[CMake] Call for Module maintainer volunteers

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2007-07-26 03:20-0400 Brandon Van Every wrote:

> I'll stick to whatever the official CMake version
> number guarantees.

That's fine since in my scheme the official modules would be released
exactly as now and you can go on exactly as before.

> [out of order] Since I have no faith in the quality and speed of a
coordinated volunteer release cycle, I don't see value in a separate CMake
Module version number.

In my scheme individual volunteer module maintainers have just two release
responsibilities.  (1) Tell the module release manager when their module is
ready for widespread testing in the next separate module release. (2)
Tell Bill when their module has been tested sufficiently to get into the
release of CMake core + official modules.

I don't think either of these responsibilities is an onerous burden for the
volunteers.  However, in the scheme I proposed the module release manager
would have some substantial work to do using official KitWare facilities so
I don't think that position should be volunteer.

So it really boils down to this.  If the developers from KitWare are serious
about getting widespread testing of modules before they are made part of an
official CMake release, then they will test the modules with separate
well-publicized releases.  If not, then we will have the present situation
where Bill is (rightly) reluctant to accept any change to official modules
because of worries about lack of testing of the changes.  That
(justified) reluctance means that the rate of module fixes actually getting
into the official release is way below what it should be, and I believe the
solution to this problem is separate module releases for testing purposes.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of
Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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