Active Xalan-J committers?

[Martin von Gagern]

Hi!

Seeing that a number of patches I submitted to the Xalan-J Jira still
haven't even been commented on, that there hasn't been a commit to the
Xalan-J repo in a LONG time, and that there seems little Java-related
activity on this mailing list here either, I'm very concerned about the
status of the project. As I wrote brefore, I'd be willing to help.

Today I had a look at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/charter.html and
found out that in order to commit stuff to the repo myself,
1. I'd have to be nominated as a committer by some active committer,
2. I'd have to be approved by 50% of the active committers,
3. some other active committer would have to review my patches.

So the key question is: Who are the active committers for Xalan-J?

Or is there no distinction between the Xalan-J and the Xalan-C subproject?
Would C programmers be willing to review Java patches?
How could I contact the active committers for Xalan-J in case they don't
respond to mailings such as this one here?
How are my chances they'll make me a committer if it seems they don't
even bother look at my patches?
On the other hand, how are the chances of the Xalan-J project to survive
in the long term if contributions aren't incorporated into the mainline
source tree?

I might be missing something, but if my observations about a complete
lack of activities for Xalan-J is correct, and if furthermore Xalan-J
and Xalan-C are considered separate subprojects, then it seems that
according to section 8.3 of the charta there are NO active Xalan-J
committers. Thus the whole mechanism for nominating new committers will
fail. How would the Xalan PMC wish to deal with such a situation?

Greetings,
 Martin von Gagern

[David Bertoni]

Martin von Gagern wrote:

> Hi!
>
> Seeing that a number of patches I submitted to the Xalan-J Jira still
> haven't even been commented on, that there hasn't been a commit to the
> Xalan-J repo in a LONG time, and that there seems little Java-related
> activity on this mailing list here either, I'm very concerned about the
> status of the project. As I wrote brefore, I'd be willing to help.
>
> Today I had a look at http://xml.apache.org/xalan-j/charter.html and
> found out that in order to commit stuff to the repo myself,
> 1. I'd have to be nominated as a committer by some active committer,
> 2. I'd have to be approved by 50% of the active committers,
> 3. some other active committer would have to review my patches.
>
> So the key question is: Who are the active committers for Xalan-J?

That's a very good question. I'll send out an email to the PMC and see
who is still active. Neither Xalan-J nor Xalan-C is very active at this
point.

> Or is there no distinction between the Xalan-J and the Xalan-C subproject?
> Would C programmers be willing to review Java patches?
I could, but I'm not a Java expert, and I don't think I have commit
access to the Xalan-J part of the repository. I have done some work on
Xalan-J in the past, but it would take some time for me to get up to
speed again.

> How could I contact the active committers for Xalan-J in case they don't
> respond to mailings such as this one here?
> How are my chances they'll make me a committer if it seems they don't
> even bother look at my patches?
> On the other hand, how are the chances of the Xalan-J project to survive
> in the long term if contributions aren't incorporated into the mainline
> source tree?
New contributors are always welcome.

> I might be missing something, but if my observations about a complete
> lack of activities for Xalan-J is correct, and if furthermore Xalan-J
> and Xalan-C are considered separate subprojects, then it seems that
> according to section 8.3 of the charta there are NO active Xalan-J
> committers. Thus the whole mechanism for nominating new committers will
> fail. How would the Xalan PMC wish to deal with such a situation?
I believe we are still one project at this point. I'm the PMC chair, so
I'll send out an email and see if anyone responds.

Thanks!

Dave

---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: xalan-dev-unsubscribe@...
For additional commands, e-mail: xalan-dev-help@...

[Henry Zongaro]

Hi, Martin.

Martin von Gagern <Martin.vGagern@...> wrote on 2009-10-12 10:11:00 AM:
> found out that in order to commit stuff to the repo myself,
> 1. I'd have to be nominated as a committer by some active committer,
> 2. I'd have to be approved by 50% of the active committers,
> 3. some other active committer would have to review my patches.
>
> So the key question is: Who are the active committers for Xalan-J?

Let me begin by thanking you for contributions and interest, and let me apologize for not responding sooner.

The charter sets the threshold for remaining an active committer very low.  From section 8 of the charter:

8.3 Committers remain active as long as they are contributing code or posting to the project or subproject mailing lists. If a committers has neither contributed code nor posted to the mailing lists in 3 months, a member of the PMC will e-mail the committer, the project or subproject development list, and the PMC mailing list notifying the committer that they are now in inactive status.

8.4 An inactive status will not prevent a committer committing new code changes or posting to the mailing lists. Either of these activities will automatically re-activate the committer for the purposes of voting.


Looking through the mailing lists from the past few months, I believe Joseph Kesselman is the only committer on the Xalan-Java side of things who has been responding to questions.  So we have at least one active committer.  (Actually, nobody on the PMC has e-mailed anyone to notify committers of their inactive status, so I'm not sure whether that means all committers are still considered active, or it just means nearly all committers are inactive, and perhaps unaware of it.)

In any event I haven't been able to make any time to contribute this year, but I will try to make some time in November to review your patches.  By doing so, I should revert to active status (or technically, this e-mail already causes me to revert to active status, but it doesn't really matter, as I won't be able to review your patches for several weeks).

Thanks,

Henry
------------------------------------------------------------------
Henry Zongaro
XML Transformation & Query Development
IBM Canada Lab   T/L 313-6044;  Phone [phone]
mailto:zongaro@...

[Martin von Gagern]

Hello Henry!

Henry Zongaro wrote:
> Looking through the mailing lists from the past few months, I believe
> Joseph Kesselman is the only committer on the Xalan-Java side of things
> who has been responding to questions.

How many months actually? Using gmane, his mail from 2008-02-07 in
XALANJ-2431 seems to be the latest.
http://search.gmane.org/?author=kesselman&group=gmane.text.xml.xalan.devel&sort=date

> In any event I haven't been able to make any time to contribute this
> year, but I will try to make some time in November to review your
> patches.

That is great news, looking forward to it. Since all commits in the past
two yeard were by you, I take your answer as a really good omen. :-)
When you do, sending your review cc'ed directly to me will ensure a
quick reply.

> By doing so, I should revert to active status (or technically,
> this e-mail already causes me to revert to active status, but it doesn't
> really matter, as I won't be able to review your patches for several
> weeks).

There is a large number of patches in JIRA contributed by various other
users. While of course my own patches are most important to me, I guess
there would be quite a lot of reviewing to do to include all the
contributed code. On the other hand, I guess the number of patches in
JIRA is large enough to keep Xalan improving for several releases even
without any real development work on the part of the committers except
reviewing. Do you have any plans with regard to these patches?

I once made an atempt to review a bunch of these, chosen almost at
random. They are included in a bzr branch on launchpad:
https://code.launchpad.net/~gagern/xalan/bugfixes
My review conditions were basically a look ensuring that the code seems
sane at first glance, i.e. at least unlikely to cause regressions, and a
test run ensuring that the gump test suite doesn't break.

If that's enough, then you could commit these as well. If not, then they
would need a second review, where I could perhaps learn how to review
stuff so it becomes acceptable to Xalan. And if you want me to commit
them straight from my bzr branch, then I'd need to become a committer.
Furthermore, if you'd want test cases to accompany the patches, then I'd
first have to understand the different test suites better than I do now.

Greetings,
 Martin von Gagern

[Michael Glavassevich-3]

Martin,

Martin von Gagern <Martin.vGagern@...> wrote on 10/17/2009 06:38:19 AM:

> Hello Henry!
>
> Henry Zongaro wrote:
> > Looking through the mailing lists from the past few months, I believe
> > Joseph Kesselman is the only committer on the Xalan-Java side of things
> > who has been responding to questions.
>
> How many months actually? Using gmane, his mail from 2008-02-07 in
> XALANJ-2431 seems to be the latest.
> http://search.gmane.org/?author=kesselman&group=gmane.text.xml.
> xalan.devel&sort=date

Joe doesn't usually sign his e-mails so that search isn't going to show you much. He is here (posted something 4 days ago) though mostly responds to questions on the user list.

Thanks.

Michael Glavassevich
XML Parser Development
IBM Toronto Lab
E-mail: mrglavas@...
E-mail: mrglavas@...

[keshlam]

Search for "keshlam". That's Joe Kesselman. (IE, me.)

I've become less active in part because I've been fully overcommitted (grin) to other projects. In general I've been waiting to let the community answer questions, and only throwing my two cents in if I can do so quickly, or have something specific that I think needs to be added, or have spare time/need a distraction.

______________________________________
what the hell did i do to deserve all these kittens -- Mehitabel

[Martin von Gagern]

Hi Henry!

Henry Zongaro wrote on 2009-10-16:
> I will try to make some time in November to review your patches.

How about it? Will you manage to have a look at them?

Greetings,
 Martin von Gagern