Collaboration (was Re: [webkit-dev] Pulling together on WebKit Mobile)

[Mark Rowe]

[This is drifting far from Alp's original email.  I hope the points he  
raised are not overlooked due to discussion on this very tangential  
topic.]


On 12/01/2008, at 06:55, Mike Emmel wrote:

> And its a good way to allow developers to build up a work history to

> ask for main commit rights.

We already have a well-defined policy for how this is handled, <http://webkit.org/coding/commit-review-policy.html 
 >.  I don't see what hosting git repositories has to do with  
Subversion commit access.

> I have a patch for example to allow the gtk webkit to run on OSX. But
> its a workaround for a bug in the cairo OSX port.
> I'd like to be able to get the patch public and work with the cairo
> OSX port maintainer to explain why I did what I did
> and what he could do to cairo to fix OSX cairo.
>
> Without a public work area this sort of problem is difficult to work  
> on.
> Assuming cairo is fixed then we would need to figure out version info
> for the OSX port of GTK etc etc.

I've found email works really well for discussing patches in the  
past.   Indeed, that's what we use for a lot of patch discussion  
inside Apple.   Would an "official", public git repository make this  
easier?  Possibly.  A git repository for collaboration is a nicety,  
but hardly a necessity.  As Oliver mentioned, it is not at all  
difficult to publish your own public git repository.

> Being able to run the OSX port and the gtk port at the same time on
> OSX is a nice feature.
> Other open source ports such as QT might want a similar workspace for
> similar problems.

Staikos Computing Services provides something similar to what you  
describe for those collaborating on the Qt port, <http://trac.webkit.org/projects/webkit/wiki/QtWebKitContrib 
 >.  While I would prefer it were hosted somewhere more  
"official" (eg, git.webkit.org alongside the git mirror of SVN), I  
have heard very few requests for this from outside the Qt developer  
community.  It is something I am interested in doing in the future,  
but it takes planning and time that I can better spend elsewhere at  
present.

> As of now the patch sits in my git tree unsubmitted.

Do you consider using git to be a requirement for you to contribute at  
all to WebKit?

- Mark

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