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Using, learning, programming and modding the Gigatron and anything related.
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marcelk
Posts: 488
Joined: 13 May 2018, 08:26

About GitHub repositories

Post by marcelk »

at67 has extensive developments in his fork of gigatron-rom. There are other people doing similar things as well. Those developments are largely orthogonal to what is already there and I see two ways we can go with this:

1. Keep independent developments separate in independent trees. Reject the pull requests.
2. Merge it all back, and keep merging it back as the contributions develop. Accept the pull requests.

About 1.
This means untying the common history. gigatron-rom does just that: everything related to making kit-release ROM images and stuff needed for using it (such as the Arduino tools). Everything outside goes elsewhere. Essentially we only "communicate" through the definitions in bindings.h, *.gcl, *.gt1 and *.rom files.

About 2.
We're a small community, so I see value in having one Gigatron bulk repository that you can download and then you have all the good stuff. But then at least we have to split the namespace. The idea I have for that is that you can do your own thing in "Contrib/<GitHubUserName>/...". Everything that appears there coming from that user I will accept blindly (well, if it is legal). It is your own playground. You can still advertise what is in there in the root README.md. Everything changed outside Contrib/ needs to be discussed/reviewed more properly. Everything changed inside Contrib/username by other usernames needs the same review treatment.

Any thoughts?
at67
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Posts: 647
Joined: 14 May 2018, 08:29

Re: About GitHub repositories

Post by at67 »

marcelk wrote: 22 May 2018, 14:46 1. Keep independent developments separate in independent trees. Reject the pull requests.
2. Merge it all back, and keep merging it back as the contributions develop. Accept the pull requests.

About 1.
This means untying the common history. gigatron-rom does just that: everything related to making kit-release ROM images and stuff needed for using it (such as the Arduino tools). Everything outside goes elsewhere. Essentially we only "communicate" through the definitions in bindings.h, *.gcl, *.gt1 and *.rom files.

About 2.
We're a small community, so I see value in having one Gigatron bulk repository that you can download and then you have all the good stuff. But then at least we have to split the namespace. The idea I have for that is that you can do your own thing in "Contrib/<GitHubUserName>/...". Everything that appears there coming from that user I will accept blindly (well, if it is legal). It is your own playground. You can still advertise what is in there in the root README.md. Everything changed outside Contrib/ needs to be discussed/reviewed more properly. Everything changed inside Contrib/username by other usernames needs the same review treatment.

Any thoughts?
1) Is the clean and probably right way to do it and if the community gets over a certain size will most likely have to be the eventual conclusion.

2) Is what we should do, as you said the community is currently small, specific and niche; providing a segmented bulk repo that anyone and everyone can easily access for all their Gigatron needs will not only foster an active and thriving community, but will also lead to a significant increase in cross fertilisation/pollination of ideas, experiments, software and hacks. Splitting the namespace as you described is the perfect solution, as long as it doesn't lead to a heavier workload or significant maintenance cost.
Cwiiis
Posts: 27
Joined: 14 May 2018, 09:04

Re: About GitHub repositories

Post by Cwiiis »

I like the idea of a contrib section - a lot of very large projects do this and get away with it (TensorFlow and PCL are two that come to mind) and it certainly suits a niche project like this.
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marcelk
Posts: 488
Joined: 13 May 2018, 08:26

Re: About GitHub repositories

Post by marcelk »

Contrib/ it is!
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