Mail Archives: geda-user/2015/07/09/12:21:34
On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 8:01 PM, <gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 8 Jul 2015, Evan Foss (evanfoss AT gmail DOT com) [via
> geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:
>
>> A few people have said that projects slow when developers loose
>> interest. While everyone is here (admittadly sucked in by the gravity
>> of the other thread) it is worth asking what would excite developer
>> interest?
>
>
> I am an user of gEDA; mostly gschem and PCB. I never contributed anything,
> so my opinion is of an outsider's and is mostly about how/why I didn't join.
>
> First, my generic answer. What makes me work on a random open source
> project? For me, it's a combination of these, probably in this order or
> priority:
>
> 1. It's fun to code it - in hobby projects this is clearly the top prio
>
> 2. I need the feature - in a project ran by others, it's unlikely I'd work
> on a feature I wouldn't need or use directly. I think I'd leave
> such features for other developer. It's a bit different in the projects I
> run, for some reason I feel more responsibility there.
>
> 3. My work is useful and is built into the project; my patches are not
> thrown out and there are no unreasonable barriers that make any contribution
> 10x more complicated and time consuming than if it was my own project. This
> point may look somewhat fuzzy in this generic form, but it is very clear in
> practice and the decision is easy when I send a few patches.
>
> 4. This is a combination of 1 and 3: the project has a "roadmap"; it doesn't
> even have to be a written one, but generally it's going towards some
> specific goals that are recognizable with the naked eye of an average user.
> The goals should be at least partially aligned with my exceptations about
> the project. In other words: the project at least a bit tries to achieve
> what (as an user) I expect/want.
>
> ****
> DISCLAIMER: I don't want to trigger a VCS-war, and I don't mean any offense.
> I do realize developers of gEDA are intelligent, skilled people with their
> own reasons to code what they code. I am merely trying to describe what
> makes me not to consider contribution.
> ****
>
> My specific answer in case of PCB:
>
> - DVCS kills point 1. and 3. for me. It often kills 4. too, but in case of
> PCB I couldn't ever see a clear roadmap since I started to use it in the mid
> 2000s.
You should really try again on DVCS. Its just totally better and the world
isn't going back, don't shut yourself out of having fun on 90% of new software.
> - In practice this means random people are working in random branches on
This is certainly true of gEDA but not because of DVCS.
> - The combinaiton of the above two means I can't see a central repo where
> developers would really commit useful (-for-me) changes on a regular basis
> pushing the project in a direction I like at least a bit. New versions tend
> to be less aligned with my needs as user. When I was using the official
> version, in the last few years each upgrade was a risk of a bad surprise.
>
> - Bad experience with contribution from the far past (others say these
> things got improved lately). Many years ago I tried to fix a small bug but
> getting my patch accepted took too long and I had to spend too much time
> fine tuning my patch for no apperant reason. Later on I tried to contribute
> by working out an external example code for getting shorts displayed better.
> Developers got distracted into a "before we can deal with this, we need to
> clean up the infrastructure of PCB here a bit" recursion (this happens a lot
> with me in my own projects too!). All in all, I consider both occasions
> total waste of my time which made it easy to move on to other projects.
The people in charge of the official repo, such as it is, don't really like
dealing with some types of contributions. This is apparently a widespread
feeling, but until we get someone who wants to take charge of a more aggressive
repo nothing will change.
> - PCB started to take directions in the last 4..5 years that I didn't really
> like. The new features were much more often annoying and contra-productive
> than useful for me. I started to compile PCB from source to turn off opengl
> (normally I'd install the debian package). The features I really wanted or
> the features I'd find useful didn't stir much interest lately. At some point
> a few years back, after a new version introduced
> yet-another-bunch-of-code-I-didn't-want, I just decided to fork an older
> version of PCB. I implemented the features I wanted, and I don't have to
> worry how a new release would be stuffed with features I'd never need.
>
> - Now that I have my fork, it's unlikely that I'd contribute to the official
> stuff for simple, small, local, selfish reasons: I obviously do all the
> little things the way I enjoy the most which makes working on my fork much
> more attractice any time I feel like coding something for PCB. It's a
> one-way mechanism.
>
> - It is important to mention that I could do this only because even that old
> version of PCB that I choose was mature enough.
This is the death spiral gEDA is stuck in. Main line development is so slow
that (essentially) private forks are more attractive, which in turn slows
development more, etc.
Britton
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