Re: Status

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Jim Kingdon wrote:
> 
> > the next generation Mac OS X is a real live BSD Unix system
> 
> Sorry, this is a digression from GDB (and probably something I could
> find on some Apple sites), but is this BSD as in something which is
> synced with a modern BSD?  Or is it ancient pre-POSIX stuff like
> shipped with so many Mach/NeXT systems from the past?  I heard FreeBSD
> is the reference kernel but what about the rest of the system?

There's some kind of Mach layer underneath, 2.5 I think, but the BSD
part is supposed to be reasonably current, in fact I've heard that some
of Apple's work (like HFS support) is in current BSD trees.  But I'm
still learning about the details of all this.  (Not a digression IMHO,
relates directly to what Apple's patches to GDB will look like.)

> Anyway, welcome back and I'm sure having you at Apple will be a Good
> Thing.  It was cool to see CVS shipping with Rhapsody but Wilfredo
> Sanchez never really got in sync with the CVS world outside Apple (due
> to various reasons, not necessarily anyone's fault).

I thought Cygnus' CVS repository was large, but Apple's is awesome; seems
to be used for all new software development here...

> > one of its first jobs will be to decide how to run GDB maintenance
> > henceforth; this will be a chance to think about whether to retain the
> > status quo or to come up with a new system.
> 
> That's a pretty general question.  I want, roughly speaking, to
> continue what has been going on with contributions from JT and Andrew
> and Stan and JimB and Eli and Jimmy Guo and so on, but to make it
> easier for all that to happen, and more oriented towards trying to
> attract more contributors (whether in a maintainer role or
> documentation writing or outreach or whatever).  So if the question is
> "status quo or new system" I think my answer is "neither" :-).

To get more concrete about it, one key decision is whether to have a
single chief maintainer or to have a group on more-or-less equal
footing, and then if it's a group, how do technical controversies
get resolved, by voting or by consensus.  GCC uses a group with
consensus.  Is that right for GDB also?  While a single chief
maintainer can resolve disputes more quickly by handing down clear
decisions, it also adds more work and more responsibility, and the
progress of the project can become dependent on the one person.

Personally, I think for GDB the benefits of having a single chief
maintainer outweigh the problems.

Stan