[petsc-dev] Long running development

[Matthew Knepley]

I think the model of long-running development, which is also the model
being used by the integrator (Jed) to master, is not suitable for a
community nor scalable.

I am developing in knepley/pylith, which is the branch I tell PyLith people
to look at. I know I need to keep up-to-date with other changes because I
eventually want to get into the release, and don't want one big hairy
merge. However, I can't merge with 'next' because that stuff is not going
in the release. The current model says that I know about what everyone else
is doing in all other branches, and pull those branches which interact with
my changes in. That is a huge load on an individual developer, and
impossible to know everything that will matter. And how will I know which
of these is going to make it master?

This is exactly how merges to master will also happen. Someone with control
issues will find every branch that should be merged in and will do that. It
sounds totally unscalable, and would fall apart if that person is not
there. Linus likes making himself indispensible. This sounds like that.

   Matt

-- 
What most experimenters take for granted before they begin their
experiments is infinitely more interesting than any results to which their
experiments lead.
-- Norbert Wiener
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