[En-Nut-Discussion] RFC: Moving to github

[Harald Kipp]

Hi Simon,

On 20.07.2015 14:25, Simon Budig wrote:
> Harald Kipp (harald.kipp at egnite.de) wrote:
>> If it was: "Should we move to Github?" then I can't give any answer,
>> because the question makes no sense too me. Decentralization implies,
>> that there is no central code base, doesn't it?
> 
> Well, you want to have a "home" for the project where newbies can grab a
> copy of the code, without having to jump through hoops to find the
> "correct" tree.

And what do you think is "the correct tree"? The one with the most
forks? The root fork? The one that distributes official releases? The
most active, most supported, most reliable?

If its a well maintained repository that exactly fits my needs, I
wouldn't care, if it's called "official" or not. And of course I'd offer
my patches to this specific repository in the first place.

I think that there is a chance for Nut/OS as well. In the meantime there
are many supported hardware platforms and none of the contributors can
check his patches against all of them. Ole's code base would be my first
choice for NXP's LPC family, but for STM32 I'd prefer Uwe's code base,
while relying on my own repo when it comes to minimal code size for AVR.
It's the responsibility of each repository's maintainer to make sure,
that he keeps his stuff up to date. If X's repo stops including the
latest enhancements, I can accept it or look for an alternative or
create my own fork.

Actually we have one developer, who is already working this way for a
very long time. Philipp maintains his own branch and does a very good
job in this sense for TI parts. If I want to use TI's Cortex chips, I'd
prefer his branch over the trunk.

I know, that the majority of large project do have _one_ official repo.
But they have a lot more resources than our tiny project, with regular
meetings, steering committees, full time paid people etc. Nut/OS
contribs are mostly driven by specific needs of a specific developer at
a specific time.

Regards,

Harald


P.S. In general I share your view regarding SF. But during the last 10
years of Nut/OS development I've seen too many other services, who
claimed to offer an alternative and faded away later or at least
announced their shutdown several times.