I'd like to get the language bindings out of the core Subversion tree
and into their own project.
Right now, the bindings face an impossible task: they're supposed to
keep up with all API changes, and yet always be ready for release at
the same time as the rest of Subversion. The results have been
predictable: the bindings cause us release headaches every time,
because there's never enough time to test them thoroughly. Anyone
involved in releases lately can testify to pain. And it's not the
fault of the bindings maintainers, who do a fine job under the
circumstances. It's simply because we insist on treating the bindings
as "part of Subversion", instead of like any other third-party project
that needs to keep up with Subversion's APIs.
My proposal is that they simply become an independent project. They
would release their own tarballs, 'subversion-bindings-X.Y.Z.gz',
where 'X.Y.Z' always matches the release of Subversion that those
bindings are compatible for. They would have their own bug tracker;
whether they have their own mailing lists or share svn's is up for
grabs (I'm neutral on it). The most important thing, though, is that
their release schedule would be totally up to them. A new bindings
release for X.Y.Z would come out some time after the corresponding
Subversion release. Whether that's one day, or a week, or a month,
would depend totally on how quickly the bindings maintainers get them
up-to-date and tested. Users who absolutely depend on bindings would
simply not upgrade their Subversion until the relevant bindings
release is ready. (Maybe the bindings tarball would unpack "into" the
same subversion tree, creating a bindings/ subdir, or maybe it would
work some other way -- that's an implementation detail.)
I think life will be *much* easier for both core Subversion developers
and bindings developers if we do this.
Any objections?
-Karl
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Received on Fri Feb 20 19:47:10 2004