Re: cvs problem

On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, John Summerfield wrote:
>
> > I don't think I was being rude. It's true I'm no diplomat. I've
> > criticised actions (and, I think, with considerable justice), but I've
> > not actually criticised people.
>
> How can your criticisms be 'with considerable justice' (justification?)

I think my comments to another go to address this. The short form
is that the particular problems I had required all of two minutes to fix
by telling me the solution.

When I get pointed to the same wrong documents I've allready read, then
I think I' well justified in concluding that there's something wrong
and saying so.

>
> > And my point is that something moved. Something that many people (I
> > don't know how many, but thousands wouldn't surprise me) depended on.
>
> I'd be surprised if most of what moved affected hundreds ...

What I can surmise of the scale of your operation suggests its likely.

> > I have over thirty years' experience in computing, many of them
> > supporting users. That experiece tells me that making a change that
> > inconveniences users is a mistake. If the change really must be made,
> > do it so as to reduce the inconvenience as far as possible.
>
> As you have only been here 2 weeks, what do you know about what did (or
> didn't) need to be done? Or about the work that went into making the
> whole change as painless as possible? CVS was the most painful, and there
> were forewarnings about it, to the extent that we made sure that those
> with changes to commit weren't affected before they changed ...

Forwarning didn't help those arriving at the wrong time. Getting on to the lists
didn't work as described, so don't use that as an excuse.

My major concern is not so much the changes that were made, but that the problems
that arose were not addressed properly.

>
> "End users", IMHO, it should have been totally irrelevant too ... remove
> and re-check out the tree ... but, then again, I believe it was PeterE
> that even posted a 'how to change your CVS to point to the new server'
> script, so that those users weren't inconvience as well ...

He might have, but not anywhere that I could find it.

>
> if you are going to play with CVS, then deal with problems that *will*
> arise as a result of it ... else, download the .tar.gz files like everyone
> else ...
>
> > From my other readinds I see that the PG team controls the entire disk
> > layout. Given that, I can see no reason that the CVS tree needed to be
> > changed in the way it was.
>
> well, for one, its easier to remember:
>
> /cvsroot
>
> then
>
> /home/projects/pgsql/cvsroot

ln -s /home/projects/pgsql/cvsroot /cvsroot

Nobody even took the time to tell me what it had changed to. I can live with the change if I have to,
but first it's essential to have current information, and nobody took (in over two weeks) the time
to ensure I had that information.

Now I don't know why individuals get involved in OSS projects or how they get their rewards,
but I'd guess that having happy users is part of it.

And users need support, and those who use the CVS repositiories you should especially welcome as they're
(or so I imagine) prospective new team members..

What I'm complaining about is neither helpful nor welcoming.

Now there have been exceptions - I've also had some very good responses to other problems.