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Datum: Sat, 06 Sep 2008 18:01:48 +0200 Von: Udo Richter udo_richter@gmx.de An: VDR Mailing List vdr@linuxtv.org Betreff: Re: [vdr] VDR Development
Hans Werner wrote:
Sourcecaps I believe has existed as a patch for about four *years* and has it's own web page. Absolutely ridiculous. I am lost for words.
So I guess mythtv has something like that, right?
Kaffeine looks like it does (in dvbrc you see: "DVB0_LNB0_source=Astra-19.2E,Hotbird-13.0E" and you can have multiple DVB cards).
Not sure about MythTV but don't underestimate it.
Anyway the point is that VDR almost has this nice capability, but sadly it is not quite there, because sourcecaps only exists as a patch. Something is wrong.
Also, I've never heard of anyone doing a more general patch that also integrates things like the lnbsharing patch, or allowing different diseqc setups for different cards.
I think you are suggesting that there are improvements beyond sourcecaps+lnbsharing which could be made. Definitely, but how many steps away from the current release do you think someone is willing to develop?
Patches should be short term tools for moving code into a repository, nothing more. After that you carry on and work on further improvements.
So much for developers that would contribute if there just was a public repository. The same developers could already write patches and improve them until they match Klaus' quality needs.
The current system is not as encouraging and predictable as it should be regarding merging of innovations into the mainstream, so there is a barrier to that innovation.
The way things are done in VDR means that patches can languish for years without getting merged into the mainstream. If I had written sourcecaps or lnbsharing I would be very upset that my (clearly useful) work had been ignored and not merged into the mainstream.
If the development system were more welcoming to improvements (and predictable about merging patches) then there would be far more good work done. Everyone wants some quality control, but, and it may surprise some people, quality and high speed development are possible at the same time. In many ways it is easier for developers to solve big difficult problems in one big quick push because the whole problem stays in memory.
A more subtle point is that patches are not necessarily independent -- you don't really know if there are any unexpected consequences of applying more than one patch until you try them all together. It's nonsense to put patches on websites for people to pull in as needed -- once you have more than one patch the result is undefined.
So it is actually essential at some point to put all patches together in one place and start debugging the whole project.
And that is what a repository is for.
Hans