-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello everybody, I would like to discuss some issues with the em28xx-new project and the re-merging process with the upstream code and the linuxtv project. First I would like to say that I am not an active developer on this project, but a very heavy user that followed the project very close and made some documentation, packages, helped getting some issues discussed and some devices added. This project is important for me because I need it to be merged successfully and with width support so it will become maintainable on large basis. This is the situation: Markus Rechberger has worked for more than 3 years on a clone/fork of the official code, creating the em28xx-new [1] project. He has worked very very hard on this project and produced a lot of code and provides a lot of support to the users of his project. It takes lot of energy and resources to pull of this kind of work! I do really respect this work and hope others also do this! In a good free software development process somebody would clone some work to his own personal repository, then add or fix one feature. Create a diff compared with the upstream code and then. Commit the patch with good description to the upstream project, so this feature and its code changes can be reviewed, tested and supported. After this one feature fix and patch, a developer moves to his next feature and repeats to process so step by step and patch by patch the project grows. This understanding of the code bye a larger group of people will lead to a platform of developers that can maintain and contribute to the project. This would be the proper way of doing things it most cases, but a developer need to know and understand or mentored with this from the start. However sometimes a developer works very hard on the code creating lots of new features, adding support for lots of new devices and fixes lots of issues without committing patches during the process. After 3 years or more its understandable that it can lead to a code base almost unrecognizable from the initial cloned code base. So what to do now! To ask from the developer to completely separate all his work in individual patches that can be committed to upstream is almost unrealistic. A good plan needs to be created and discussed by the people that matter. In this case I have seen several attempts of Markus to make large patches and some smaller to try getting his code merged upstream, but they were after short discussion rejected, because they did not fit the one patch for one fix, feature, etcetera standard/idea. I am going to ask for understanding of both the side of Markus that worked very hard on his code, and that of the upstream developers. There are both valid reasons on how they did there things. But we need a solution to get all the code back into the upstream project so it can go into the kernel project and eventually be delivered at the Linux distributions and all there users, so no custom compiling, custom package install are required and non transparent bug reports can be stopped. Is it possible for an upstream developer to step forward and take on the task of merging the code of Markus back into mainstream, all questions on the code can be discuses on several mailing-list [2] of choice. Current the situation is kind of a hold-of, the issues are not being discussed, the problem is not addressed, so no process is made and during this time users are suffering from non working nor good supported devices for there hybrid dvb-t/analog broadcast experiences under Linux. I hope this lead to a productive discussion that will get the code to the end users through there main distribution systems. Kind regards, Jelle de Jong [1] http://mcentral.de/ [2] http://mcentral.de/mailman/listinfo/em28xx -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iJwEAQECAAYFAkkLfuMACgkQ1WclBW9j5HnpUwP9HgYDHBeAxAtCMjH2Ffzil0En 7g9WT9KXG+ZFP+pToDuFaIcj6uJVzivhrShzoCt9kqjjFGVnFZHz4MgG0U8k1nuh e/9ZFm9n1RN9zmsbbRB3agQKuCheqwrUJyJm3Pc9kcE8myC8SLv6drgHcaUTumzm 2gdHeB4HDNtM2ADbq/g= =zQzU -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ linux-dvb mailing list linux-dvb@xxxxxxxxxxx http://www.linuxtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linux-dvb
