[mythtv] Status Question: Is current SVN useable?

David Backeberg dbackeberg at gmail.com
Tue Jan 22 03:55:54 UTC 2008


I feel that mythtv gets SVN versus stable releases balance just about right.

The other extreme would be something like ffmpeg. You can read their
release philosophy here:
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/download.html

On Jan 21, 2008 7:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox at pnl.gov> wrote:
> But, as previously mentioned, if its more stable, has less bugs, then
> why not release it. Its not worse then what people are already running.
> Getting more features out quicker may get you more developers to help
> fix the remaining bugs.
>
> I think that's part of the problem though. Going to SVN is not always an
> option. I've considered submitting patches, but since I am on the stable
> version, I'm not very encouraged to submit to something that's already
> horribly out of date. I'm probably not the only one either. Release
> Early, Release Often(1) has a lot of benefits I think Myth misses out
> from. As far as documentation getting a little out of date, I can live
> with that. I'm use to that from tons of other open source projects. In a
> lot of projects, I consider any documentation at all a bonus. Having
> reasonably current binaries in distro's that track fairly closely to
> development is a much better thing then up to date documentation. It
> means I have a reasonably good chance of submitting a bug fix or feature
> myself based on what code I already have, or be able to talk to a
> developer that says something other then "Oh, we know about that, we
> fixed that in SVN 4 months ago, please wait a few months till we release
> and it gets into your distro" kinds of things. (Not heard specifically
> from the Myth project. Just a wild example)
>
> Most other open source projects went away from long development cycles
> because of this.
>
> Kevin
>
> No ill will intended. Just intended as constructive criticism
>
> 1.
> http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html
>
>
> On Mon, 2008-01-21 at 15:09 -0500, David Backeberg wrote:
> > Aside from the reasons already given, (deferring to Isaac, more bugs
> > to fix, etc.) I also think the documentation isn't quite ready. When
> > Myth makes a release, I believe there is usually a guide of the sort
> > that came with .20.2 that mentioned the changes to expect and how to
> > use them. People who aren't code hackers and bug smooshers can help
> > out in that area. I know when I went from 20.2 to SVN I noticed tables
> > added to database and some other things.
> >
> > But honestly, I would personally love to see a release myself. I'm
> > another long time user who wanted feature X and thus required jumping
> > to SVN. One thing that I've wanted (aside from mythweather) is a more
> > integrated Mythflix setup. I've decided that I should put up or shut
> > up, and thus joined the dev list to see how hard it would be to just
> > do this myself and submit a patch.
> >
> > On Jan 21, 2008 2:50 PM, Kevin Fox <Kevin.Fox at pnl.gov> wrote:
> > > So, if SVN is the most stable, and has a ton of bug fixes/new features,
> > > why not just release it as is? Release Early, Release Often, has its
> > > benefits. Why not make the 2 months from now release 0.22? What would it
> > > hurt? It would allow people to just "apt-get update" (or whatever) all
> > > the hard work that was added to Myth, that is out of reach of a lot of
> > > people.
> > >
> > > Kevin
> > >
> > >
> > > On Sun, 2008-01-20 at 21:28 +0000, Stuart Morgan wrote:
> > > > On Sunday 20 January 2008 20:32:57 Reza Naima wrote:
> > > > > But I am at a personal crossroadds and wanted advise in helping make a
> > > > > decision as I've not followed the lists closely for ages and wanted to
> > > > > see why the normal stream of newer versions stopped, and what expect
> > > > > down the pipeline.
> > > >
> > > > There are multiple reasons why 0.21 has been so long in the making and I would
> > > > probably struggle to find a single one on which everyone could agree.
> > > >
> > > > One of the major ones is that Isaac, the lead dev, has been too busy for the
> > > > last few months to be actively involved in development. Since Isaac has
> > > > always been the driving force behind setting target dates for new releases
> > > > we've been a little slow to set a deadline. Many developers run trunk on
> > > > their production machines (yes, it's that stable). Most of us have forgotten
> > > > what 0.20 was like and we've no personal motivation to release a new version.
> > > >
> > > > Another reason is that whilst the project grows in size the number of active
> > > > developers hasn't kept pace, if anything there might be less people making
> > > > commits now than there was a year ago. That doesn't mean the project is
> > > > stagnating, far from it, but there is a massive backlog of tickets to work
> > > > through.
> > > >
> > > > Although 0.20 couldn't be described as feature complete, it was the first
> > > > release where many of the must-have features had finally been implemented,
> > > > it's quite natural once you reach that point for subsequent releases to be
> > > > fewer and further between.
> > > >
> > > > There are simply too many changes, big and small since 0.20 to remember them
> > > > all, but many are significant. SVN is probably the most stable version of
> > > > mythtv we've ever had, even accounting for some of the recent instability
> > > > caused by some major changes (backend auto-discovery and multirec). We're
> > > > probably less than 2 months from a release now, we've set an arbitrary target
> > > > in mid to late Feb but I should make clear that the date is NOT FINAL.
> > > >
> > >
> > >
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