Version control systems

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

Ian Lynagh:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:10:31AM +0100, Malcolm Wallace wrote:
>>
>> On 12 Aug 2008, at 01:35, Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
>>> Ah, good point!  Changing ghc to git means *all* developers of boot
>>> libraries need to use git *regardless* of what repo format the boot
>>> libraries are in.  After all, they need to validate against the
>>> current ghc head before pushing.
>>
>> It is worth pointing out that I *never* validate against ghc head  
>> when
>> I commit to the core libraries.
>
> Also, all of the people who send us patches don't need to validate  
> (and
> I suspect most of them don't), as we validate the patches before  
> pushing
> them.

Well, its up to you whether you want to validate for other people, but  
I don't think that is the right policy.  Everybody (including Malcolm)  
should validate.

If you contribute code to the linux kernel, comprehensive testing of  
the code is a requirement, too.  It's not as if it were a strange  
requirement of GHC as an open source project to ask people to test  
their code properly.  In fact, I even tell my first year students that  
they should test their code properly.  Maybe we should hand books to  
introductory software engineering out to potential ghc and library  
contributors.  (Sorry to get cynic, but I can't believe that we are  
even discussing that.)

Manuel