Re: Possibility of merged codebase?

From: David Abrahams (david.abrahams_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-08 09:38:45

----- Original Message -----
From: "Craig McPheeters" <cmcpheeters_at_[hidden]>
To: <david.abrahams_at_[hidden]>
Cc: <matt+jamming.7904ac_at_[hidden]>; <rmg_at_[hidden]>
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2002 4:44 PM
Subject: Re: Possibility of merged codebase?

> Hi Dave,
>
> That's a good thought, but I have hesitations about proceeding along that
> line right now.
>
> I'm not sure how much further I want to push Jam. I've been able to build
> two versions of large complex jam build systems using the stock jam with
my
> extensions. I'm willing to accept all changes to jam that are made in its
> mainline, but would rather keep the number of differences in my branch to
> as minimal a subset as possible.

Wouldn't we all? None of us really wants to be working on build systems, it
seems ;-)

> At the moment the three of us have variants of Jam, each based on the
mainline
> version. I'm interested in seeing what's in store for the mainline -
there
> are some good folks at Perforce and all the changes they have been working
> on internally are about to be released.
>
> I'm a little afraid that as the number of changes increases in my branch,
> the possibilities of any of them being incorporated into the mainline
> will decrease. So with that in mind, I'm going to be careful
incorporating
> future changes, at least until we have a better idea of what the process
> is for incorporating our changes into the mainline.
>
>
> There are changes in both your branch and Matt's that I would like to get
> at some point in time, but I think I'm going to wait until the dust
settles
> over the mainline before doing very much more.

This makes sense to me. In fact, I've just learned that RMG hasn't even
looked over my changes yet. At the time I wrote that email I was under the
impression that if I hadn't already been contacted, a negative decision was
already made. I've since heard from RMG to the contrary. I wanted to start
using the discipline that you and Matt have been following of #ifdef'ing all
changes. At this point, however, I think that would make my code much more
complicated and would only do it if Perforce advises me to. I'm willing to
wait for more feedback from Perforce before proceeding.

Thanks for your attention.
-Dave