WINE only controlled by one person? Since over a week no updates.

[theuserbl]

As I have already written it in the WINE forum

https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=35477

for over a week there are commited every day (with exception of the weekend) ca. 35 commits.
But since then the commits stopped.

Then I have looked at

https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine

https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/commits/master

https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/

who have commited the code.

And surprisingly Alexandre Julliard is the only one who commit direct code. And he is the only one, who accept and allow code of other.

So it seems, that this big and huge project is mained only by one single person!

And if that person is in holliday, ill or something else, the complete development of the proeject is stopped.

I am very bewilderd about this situation.

Greetings
theuserbl

[tildearrow]

Here's the answer.

Folks, I'll be on vacation next week, so there won't be any commits. Please feel free to continue sending patches, I'll catch up when I get back. Also, release 6.13 will be delayed by a few days. See you all in a week! -- Alexandre Julliard julliard at winehq.org

[Sonadow]

So it seems, that this big and huge project is mained only by one single person!

And if that person is in holliday, ill or something else, the complete development of the proeject is stopped.

I am very bewilderd about this situation.

Greetings
theuserbl

So what? Got a problem with that?

The WINE project is not obligated to provide you with anything you never paid for.

Linux kernel development is also headed by only one person. Why aren't you complaining about it?

[oiaohm]

And surprisingly Alexandre Julliard is the only one who commit direct code. And he is the only one, who accept and allow code of other.

So it seems, that this big and huge project is mained only by one single person!

And if that person is in holliday, ill or something else, the complete development of the proeject is stopped.

I am very bewilderd about this situation.

It seams like odd thing but it makes sense.

So what? Got a problem with that?

The WINE project is not obligated to provide you with anything you never paid for.

Linux kernel development is also headed by only one person. Why aren't you complaining about it?

This is not really answer. Its the same kind of reason why 1 is at the top of the wine and one is at the top of the Linux kernel.

There is a simple thing called conflict of interest. The maintainer cannot sign off on his own code. Alexandre Julliard with wine is the maintainer and he is basically retied from writing code. Linus with the Linux kernel has done basically the same thing. So they now don't have conflict of interest on the code they are sign on off because none of it is theirs.

There are over 8 developers with wine who if something bad had happen to Alexandre Julliard so he could not take back up the role in a reasonable timeframe could take over being the maintainer. Remember these people are active developers on wine as in writing new code. Now let say a person for this short time frame had stepped up in the role. 1) they cannot sign off on their current work. 2) they would be signing off on other people work. This lead to a problem where the other people appear to be more productive getting code into wine than the one who stepped up to being maintainer.

Even that Alexandre Julliard is away the automated testbot keeps on checking submitted patches https://source.winehq.org/patches/ as you see here. You also have the people who are closest to being next inline as the maintainer still doing patch review in their area. Thing to remember all the next in line to be maintainer with wine are still active developers writing new code and part of their employment is getting code into wine.

So the fun part here is when Alexandre Julliard be replaced someone employment contract will have to be changed and that person will basically have to retire from writing code for wine and move purely to maintainer/code review. 1-14 days disruption to wine development is not enough to justify placing in temporary maintainer.. Yes a temporary maintainer or replacement maintainer change would evolve messing with employment contracts and having the person change what they are allowed todo.

1-14 days of no accepted code is simplest solution. Alexandre Julliard does a good job and he is not conflict with his job requirements or what he wants todo when he is doing it.

The current wine maintainer setup that results in few stalls in accepted code a year has the developers who are skilled good enough to be the maintainer who want to keep on writing code for wine to be able to do so. Reality is a person to be the lead maintainer normally has had to have had decent time being a coding developer to get to understand the code base well enough to be the maintainer.

Yes this is one of these chicken and egg kind of problems. You cannot be the lead maintainer without have been a developer of code for the project and you cannot be a developer of code for the project at the same time being the lead maintainer.

This is why there is a lot projects with only 1 lead maintainer that at first appearance same to be at risk from a single person failure that are not because there are people who can replace lead maintainer but doing a lead maintainer replacement even for a day not without it direct side effects to development that could work out worst than not accepting commits for month.

The world is not a simple place at times.