Notes from the version control BOF at the summit

[graydon hoare]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

>>>>But as I said, Graydon has funding right now to do development.
>>>
>>>Well, the funder's goal and the GCC teams's do not necessarily have to
>>>match.
>>
>>I suppose I explained the situation poorly.  Graydon was at the gcc
>>summit.  He asked for the version BOF to occur.  He explicitly asked
>>for guidance in further development.  He was open to the possibility
>>of doing work on a system other than monotone.
> 
> 
> And, I should add, my understanding is that this was being internally
> funded by Red Hat, and they expected him to use his best judgment as
> to what to do.

I ought to clarify: ian said that I have funding "now", which is not 
true. red hat is not currently paying me to work on VC systems. I am 
currently being paid to work on libgcj. what I said was that redhat has 
agreed to provide me with some funding if:

  - some big projects we interface with need new VC tools
  - those projects will actually use whatever thing(s) we spend money on

iow, they don't feel like funding hobby hacking unless it's clear that 
the funding will yield fruit in the real world. I think that's a 
reasonable enough position.

I got a mixed message from the gcc community on this, but that's 
probably the best I could hope for: there's a fair bit of interest, lots 
of specific wish-list items, but the need is not yet strong enough to 
bring commitment to living and working with the teething stages of a new 
tool (monotone, arch, darcs, svk). CVS works well enough that it doesn't 
yet seem worth the risk to perturb it. that's understandable; I'll look 
elsewhere.

one interesting suggestion which came up was that gcc might commit to a 
"trial" use of a new VC tool (and hammering out of features) in one of 
its smaller sub-projects, such as one of the runtime libraries, 
frontends, or branches. if someone managing one of these projects is 
interested, please let me know.

-graydon