[parted-devel] State of parted development

[David Cantrell]

Hello all,

I wanted to send this email out to make sure we are all on the same page 
with regard to where parted source code lives and what the plans are for 
each branches.  Unfortunately I got buried in some work this week and 
sort of let my parted email folder pile up.  It looks like a lot of 
great discussions have or are going on, which I love to see.  With this 
email, I want to state my current understanding of the development trees 
and where I think they should be headed.  Please followup if you see 
that I have a misunderstanding or want to add to any of these statements.

parted-1.8.x
------------
When I spoke to Leslie about the 1.x branch, it was agreed that we would 
stabilize it and continue it as necessary (i.e., as other projects were 
making use of it).  The plans for parted-2.0 are going to be invasive, 
so it will be nice to offer other projects a relatively up-to-date 
parted-1.x branch until they move over to what will be parted 2.0.

I will be releasing parted-1.8.0 final soon.  A lot of great patches 
have come in and we have a pretty solid code base for a 1.8 release. 
The 1.8.0 final release will most likely not contain up-to-date i18n 
data, but when that comes in from the Free Translation Project, I'll 
merge it and do a point release.

The future of the parted-1.8.x branch is one of maintenance.  I do not 
want to introduce any huge new features, but things such as detecting 
new partition or device types and such is fine with me.  Anything we can 
add without destroying the API is good candidate stuff for the 
parted-1.8.x branch.

WHERE IT LIVES:  For now, I am working against the subversion repository 
as the primary source tree for parted-1.8.x.  This is where I will be 
releasing from.  I told Leslie that I absolutely do not want to change 
version control systems in the middle of progressing towards a release. 
  He agreed.

WHERE IT WILL PROBABLY MOVE TO:  The new darcs repository.  Once 1.8.0 
final goes out, I would like to investigate moving it over to darcs and 
keeping the branch there.  I just don't want to mess with that while I'm 
trying to get 1.8.0 final out.  I hope everyone understands.  Once it's 
moved, I see no reason to continue using subversion for any tasks.


parted-2.x
----------
Many discussions have gone on about what will be in this branch.  I 
think we have a lot of good minds working on it and we have some great 
ideas with regard to API overhaul, testing suite work, and user 
interface enhancements.

Going forward, I and other developers will be focusing their attention 
on the parted-2.x work.  As I handle maintenance work for the 
parted-1.8.x, that will most likely involve backporting changes to that 
repository.  Makes sense, right?

WHERE IT LIVES:  The new darcs repository.


OK, so that's where my understanding is with all of this.  Is everyone 
on the same page?

-- 
David Cantrell
Red Hat / Westford, MA