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DevelopmentBazaar on the slow trackThe Bazaar (or "bzr") version control system lacks the visibility of systems like Git or even Mercurial. That is not to say that it is an insignificant project: it has a dedicated following of its own, it is the system used internally at Canonical, and it has been designated as an official GNU project (meaning that other GNU projects are expected to use it). So one would not think that Bazaar was a project in danger of running out of steam and grinding to a halt. But that, it seems, is exactly the scenario that some of its users are worried about.Stefan Monnier kicked off the discussion by noting that the number of commits to Bazaar has been dropping and that bugs are not getting fixed. The departure of lead developer Martin Pool from Canonical (and from the Bazaar project) has certainly not helped the situation. So, Stefan said:
[A]s unfixed bugs accumulate, I'm beginning to feel a bit like in the
bad CVS days where you just had to get used to circumventing its
limitations, for lack of actual development.
Some participants questioned whether there was a problem, noting that commits continue to flow into the Bazaar repository. But Matthew Fuller ran the numbers and came to a fairly clear conclusion:
From even a casual glance, falloff in bzr.dev landings is pretty
obvious. Through most of the history (looking at the month level),
bzr.dev averages at least a rev a day, not uncommonly twice that.
But the last 5 months put together don't even reach the single
month average. It's no proof of development stopping by any means,
but it sure is a red flag likely to lead people to that
conclusion.
This slowdown has happened despite the fact that a new major release (2.6) was expected in August. When that release does happen, the list of new features seems unlikely to knock the socks off many users. Bazaar, as a project, may not be dead, but it shows signs of going into a sort of maintenance mode.
What is going on?Once one accepts that development on Bazaar is slowing, it is natural to wonder why that is and what can be done about it. One possibility is that the distributed version control problem has been solved and that there is little need for more development. After all, significant projects like bash and make have not shown blistering rates of development; there simply is no need at this point. In the distributed version control system area, though, it would be hard to say that there are no challenges remaining. Projects like Git and Mercurial continue to evolve at a high rate. So, in a general sense, it would be hard to say that Bazaar is slowing down because there's nothing more to do. That doesn't mean that Canonical, which has sponsored most of the work on Bazaar, sees more that needs to be done. Indeed, according to John Arbash Meinel (Martin Pool's replacement as Bazaar lead developer), Canonical is happy with the current state of affairs:
I think fundamentally Bazaar does most of what Canonical needs, and
the team has been focusing more on other bits around Bazaar
(Launchpad, package-importer, bzr-svn integration, etc). Also,
Launchpad and Bazaar have never really been meant as products in
their own right, but more as facilities to build Ubuntu. And while
not perfect, they do a pretty darn good job of it, and it makes
sense to focus more on other areas of development.
He added that Bazaar wasn't in danger of disappearing anytime soon. "It is still being actively maintained, though a little less actively than last year." That statement was seen by some as an oblique way of saying that Bazaar is now in maintenance mode — a prospect that was not seen as particularly reassuring by Bazaar users. Of course, Bazaar is free software, licensed under the GPL, so anybody is free to step up and carry it forward. Thus far, though, that has not happened. Once again, it is worthwhile to think about why that might be. Possibly Bazaar users got comfortable with Canonical carrying the load of Bazaar development and have not, yet, felt the need to help out. Over time, some of these users might decide that it is time to pick up some of that load going forward. Or they might just switch to another system with a more active community. One possibility, raised by Ben Finney, is that Canonical's much-maligned contributor agreement is a part of the problem. This reasoning says that, since Canonical reserves the right to release contributions to Bazaar under proprietary licenses, many potential contributors have voted with their feet and gone elsewhere. It's far from clear that the contributor agreement is really part of the problem, though. If there were really a community of developers who would contribute if only the terms were more fair, an agreement-less Bazaar fork would almost certainly have emerged by now. The fact that nobody has even attempted such a fork suggests that Canonical's agreement is not really holding things back. Stephen Turnbull had an interesting alternative explanation for what is going on. Bazaar, he says, is a tool aimed at users who want their version control system to "just work" without them having to think about it much. Git, he says, is a different matter:
Many of those who chose git also made a deliberate, informed
choice, knowing that use of git requires both an investment in
learning about the tool and, often, day-to-day thought about
workflow. My suggestion is that such people are on average more
likely to contribute to git than the average bzr user is to
contribute to Bazaar.
Some participants saw this suggestion as a sort of insult against Bazaar users, saying that they lacked the ability or the drive to improve the tool. But that is not what Stephen was saying; his point is that, by appealing to users who don't want to have to think about their version control system, Bazaar has created a user community that is relatively unlikely to want to put their time into making the system better. There is an alternative that nobody has mentioned in this discussion: perhaps Bazaar has simply lost out to competing projects which have managed to advance further and faster. For sheer functionality, Git is hard to compete with. For those who are put off by the complexity of Git, Mercurial offers a gentler alternative without compromising on features. Perhaps most potential users just do not see anything in Bazaar that is sufficiently shiny to attract them away from the other tools. If that is the case, it is hard to imagine what can be done to improve the situation from the point of view of Bazaar users, especially given that Canonical has lost interest in adding features to Bazaar. Perhaps, as Ben suggested, another corporate sponsor could be found to take up the Bazaar banner. Failing that, Bazaar seems likely to stay in maintenance mode indefinitely; it will remain a capable tool, but will find itself increasingly left behind by the other free alternatives.
Brief items Quotes of the week
Distributed version control is so much harder to use when your central server is down. #Github
— Greg Raiz
Every time I've been involved in a project without a schedule, we've had a
long period of (probably highly satisfying for developers) of 'undirected
hacking' followed by crisis, followed by a rush to 'get it out before people
forget who we are' which inevitably had some fallout (I'm thinking of the
period leading up to KDE 4.0 here ;).
— Will Stephenson
GSRC 2012.09.06 releasedA new version of the GNU Source Release Collection (GSRC) is available. GSRC is a utility to "fetch, build and install the latest GNU software from source via a BSD Ports-like system." This release supports 271 GNU project packages.
PostgreSQL 9.2 releasedThe PostgreSQL 9.2 release is available. "Since the beta release was announced in May, developers and vendors have praised it as a leap forward in performance, scalability and flexibility. Users are expected to switch to this version in record numbers." LWN ran a detailed look at this release in May.
GNU patch version 2.7 releasedVersion 2.7 of the GNU patch utility — the first release in almost three years — is out. It offers various improvements to the accepted patch format including nearly full support for the "diff --git" format, a number of security-related fixes, nanosecond-precision timestamp support, and more.
The Opus codec becomes an IETF standardThe Mozilla Hacks blog announces that the Opus codec is now an official IETF standard; it is RFC6716. "Opus is the first state of the art, free audio codec to be standardized. We think this will help us achieve wider adoption than prior royalty-free codecs like Speex and Vorbis. This spells the beginning of the end for proprietary formats, and we are now working on doing the same thing for video."
SyncEvolution 1.3 released, hosting at freedesktop.orgVersion 1.3 of the SyncEvolution data synchronization framework is available. This release adds support for syncing with KDE's Akonadi or Microsoft's ActiveSync, and for synchronizing CalDAV tasks and memos. The project has also moved its infrastructure from meego.com to freedesktop.org.
Newsletters and articles Development newsletters from the last week
Study for US Congress outlines options against patent trolls (The H)The H takes a look at a report from the US Congressional Research Service about patent trolling and potential fixes to the system. "According to the researchers, it is worth considering whether to generally shorten the periods of protection for software patents because the trolls file most of their litigation claims in the last three years of the 20-year term. A patent could also be invalidated if it hasn't been practised for a number of years, they added."
Rodriguez: All 48 Liberated Pixel Cup entries reviewedOn his blog, Juan "Nushio" Rodriguez has been systematically reviewing all of the entries in the OpenGameArt project's Liberated Pixel Cup (LPC) free software game contest in recent weeks. Reviews of all 48 games are now available. Note that these are personal assessments, not the results of LPC's official judges. Note also that Rodriguez is an LPC contestant, so he had someone else review his own entry, presumably to add a bit more suspense.
Cinelerra 4.4 released with new audio processing features (Libre Graphics World)Libre Graphics World reports on the release of version 4.4 of the venerable Cinelerra video editing system. "The amount of changes is quite modest, and half of them are in the audio department. the developer claims better live audio processing, as well as audio gaps removal effect and audio oscilloscope. Apart from that, you are likely to experience faster startup, more responsive interface, better recording from webcams, and you definitely get a new Bright UI theme."
Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) DesktopHere's a lengthy posting from Michael Meeks on the state of the desktop market. "The economics of an excessively cheap product are a difficult fit for the consumer market, and drain money from the ecosystem necessary to invest in development. The relentless drive to a zero cost-point to gain market share in Linux Desktop pre-loading helps to further sterilize the space." He suggests that the business desktop may be a better target for a Linux-based solution.
Page editor: Nathan Willis |
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