[Coin-discuss] Announcing the Coin Bazaar project

[Alpár Jüttner]

Dear All,

I really like the idea of this Coin Bazaar project. Let me add two
comments, however.

Firstly, the name is probably not the best, because there is a
distributed version control system (DVCS) called Bazaar
(http://bazaar.canonical.com/en/), therefore many people will falsely
assume that this project is about replacing SVN to a Bazaar.

Secondly, I strongly suggest considering this kind of change in the
version management, probably for the whole COIN-OR project in the long
run. (Though it shouldn't be Bazaar, as it is clearly well behind
Mercurial and GIT, the two other players on this market.)

The LEMON project replaced SVN with Mercurial a bit more then two years
ago, and now we can tell, we gained a _lot_ from with change. Using a
distributed version control system is not only about changing SVN to
something more comfortable and more powerful, but it is a substantial
change in the whole development workflow.

The DVCSs separates the two functions of SVN's 'commit' command - i.e.
the creation of a changeset, and the exchange of these changesets
amongst the developers. Therefore it
      * demolishes the wall between the first class citizens (i.e. the
        developers who have write access to the repo therefore can do
        anything without any control) and the second class citizens
        (i.e. the ones who have no write access therefore cannot
        contribute directly).
      * allows off-line development
      * makes it possible to introduce a reviewing process before the
        changes goes to the primary repository of the project.

For more details I suggest having a quick look at these tutorials:

http://mercurial.selenic.com/quickstart/
http://hgbook.red-bean.com/read/

(These are Mercurial specific texts, but the concept of GIT is also very
similar).

Regards,
Alpar



On Thu, 2010-03-11 at 11:04 -0700, Hart, William E wrote:
> Announcing the Coin Bazaar project
> ==================================
> 
> I am pleased to announce the addition of the Coin Bazaar project (https://projects.coin-or.org/CoinBazaar) to the COIN-OR repository. This COIN-OR project facilitates community involvement in the COIN-OR repositories by allowing OR researchers to contribute code examples, application examples and code extensions and plugins without directly contributing to a regular COIN-OR project. Thus, this project helps bridge the gap between core package development and package extensions. Specific goals of this project are:
> 
>  * To manage extensions to COIN-OR packages that have limited subversion access
>  * Allow developers and COIN-OR users to share code and application examples
>  * Provide a home for auxilliary software tools that facilitate the use of COIN-OR tools
> 
> Coin Bazaar projects are managed within separate directories in the Coin Bazaar subversion repository. Subversion access control is used to manage edits for each project. Although these projects are intended for public distribution, the access control mechanism also supports non-public development (e.g. while preparing a publication). Note that each project is licensed separately, and our intent is not to require that Coin Bazaar projects be licensed consistently (e.g. all under the EPL).
> 
> See https://projects.coin-or.org/CoinBazaar/wiki/ProjectProposal for instructions for contributing to Coin Bazaar.
> See https://projects.coin-or.org/CoinBazaar/wiki/ProjectsAlphabetical for the list of current projects.
> 
> Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback!
> 
> Bill Hart
> wehart at sandia.gov
> 
> 
> 
> 
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