future of OfflineIMAP [long]

[Thomas Kahle]

Hi,

On 22:19 Thu 19 Jul 2012, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote:
[...]

> IOW, the more valuable contributions we have ― each contributor doing a
> few things ― the more we could still have OfflineIMAP supported. 
> 
> Here are some roles I'm thinking about:
> - official and unofficial developers sending patches;
> - official trusted maintainers (working in rotation?) to review and
>   perhaps merge the patches;
> - official testers validating patches for releases;
> - one main official maintainer blindly pulling from trusted maintainers
>   and doing the releases that contributors suggest.
> 
> Of course, such workflow would ask an isssue tracker.

I don't think that throwing more infrastructure at the problem will do
any good.  For your setup there need to be at least 3 or 4 git gurus.
Offlineimap is not the Linux kernel, what it needs is one dedicated
person to merge patches floating on the mailing list and pick up the
wrench her/him-self from time to time.  In my opinion offlineimap does
not need more features.  It just needs a little maintenance when things
in python or imaplib change and bugs that are in the present features.

> If so, maybe it would be of interest to write little scripts to make
> each task easier. For example, by role we could have:
> 
> - ./contrib/patch.py: auto-magically commit changes, ask for a comment,
>   export patch and send it to the mailing list (or send a git pull
>   request, or even better, send changes to topic branches in the official
>   repository).
> 
> - ./contrib/merge_patches.py: auto-magically fetch requested patches and
>   merge them in the correct branch and push result to the official
>   repository.
> 
> - ./contrib/test.py: fetch last WIP or last RC and start testing.
> 
> - ./contrib/release.py: fetch contributions from the current trusted
>   maintainer, auto-magically make a new release, update official
>   repository and make announce.
> 
> - ./contrib/announce.py: let each trusted contributor send announces.

This sounds like it could be useful, if someone wants to write, test,
and maintain those scripts ;)

> Also, what about improving documentation for contributors?

That would be really useful I think!  For a person already wanting to
use offlineimap, learning how to git-format-patch should be not too much
of a hump.

Cheers,
Thomas

-- 
Thomas Kahle
http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 316 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/offlineimap-project/attachments/20120720/ac19a0c1/attachment-0001.sig>