libusbx is dead, long live libusbx!

[Pete Batard]

On 2012.03.23 12:28, Michael Plante wrote:
> Do you want me to have the only
> backup if Peter decides to pull the plug?

Yes. There are good reasons to want to do that one of them being to 
bring attention to the fact that one might actually be better off going 
with the version of libusb that would never remove something that *they* 
generated and that people use. You have now made the idea of removing 
the 1.0.9rc3 tag even more seductive, in case Peter decides to remove 
it, as it should bring disgruntled people to our shores.

But if your whole point about keeping 1.0.9rc3 in libusbx is that Peter 
may remove it from libusb, that's not very convincing.

>>> Or are you implying that we should officialize the wip-hotplug, testing
>>> and all the libusb-mplante, libubs-stuge in libusbx, because they exist
>>> in libusb?
>
> What does what exists in libusb have to do with anything?

What does what ANOTHER PROJECT releases (either officially or 
unofficially) has to do with anything? It doesn't matter if it's a 
project we forked from. We didn't exert control over that release, we 
are not providing a tarball for it, therefore we shouldn't have to be 
encumbered with it. Doesn't meant that we shouldn't be aware of it, 
which we are, but there's a difference between being aware of something, 
and duplicating it for no valid reason.

> This is about what has been released, and what led up to it.

*By libusb*. Not us. Please keep in mind that we are 2 separate 
projects. If libusb dies tomorrow and takes all its repos and tarballs 
with it, it shouldn't be our problem - we're an independent project and 
can very much live standalone.

> if that's not plainly obvious, then I
> think we're hopelessly lost here.

Same here.

>>> Better make it very
>>> explicit that 1.0.9-rc3 did not originate from libusbx.
>>> 1.0.9-rc3 is for libusb. We are not libusb.
>
> 1) Tags don't specify originator, unless they're signed, afaik.  Commits do,
> and tags refer to commits.  So I don't know how you plan to make it
> explicit.

Not having something, such as orphaned commits associated to a 
tag/branch that was removed is a very explicit message. If you don't see 
1.0.9rc3 in libusbx, it means you should look for it elsewhere.

> 2) I certainly hope you don't plan to reuse that name

Why not? The libusbx 1.0.9 release and the tags that go with it are 
entirely our business.

> -- that would be even
> worse than just deleting it, per the manpage for git-tag.

So what happens when there is both a libusb 1.0.9 and libusbx 1.0.9. 
They will both have a 1.0.9 tag and reference different commits. How is 
that not the same? We are going to reuse tags whether you like it or 
not, so, just like 1.0.9, 1.0.9rc3 reuse is most certainly on the table.

> 3) Keep in mind also that many people will be fetching from both
> repositories anyway

And that we will only ever consider them as fetching from our repo 
alone, because anything else is not something we want to support. 
Whatever problem they encounter from trying to mix libusb and libsusbx, 
and that using libusbx alone would not produce is not something we want 
to support, ever.

> and will wind up with this tag even if you decide not to
> have it.

Again, their problem, not ours.

>>> considering that up until now there was no
>>> such thing as a libusbx 1.0.9-rc3 tag,
>
> Simple mistake, oversight, etc.  Did Segher also forget the 1.0.8 and 1.0.7
> tags?  Those are libusb-only, as well.

Segher didn't do anything, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. And 
1.0.8 and 1.0.7 are in mainline, the only branch we said we wanted to be 
aware of for our fork. 1.0.9rc3 isn't. If you care about 1.0.9rc3 that 
much, then I will please ask you to maintain your own branch for it, and 
let us move forward with the actual 1.0.9 release (for which, again, 
1.0.9rc3 has no relevance, since decided to use mainline and mainline 
alone as a base).

>>> Are you going to ask
>>> Peter to carry such a tag in libusb's mainline repo, because then libusb
>>> may get questions about libusbx-1.0.9rc1?
>
> No, but only because Peter probably doesn't see libusbx as legitimate.

Perhaps you think we fork because we see libusb as legitimate any longer?

> If he did and wanted to replace it with libusb, then yes.

> We should support that exact unreproducible case it if we want to replace
> libusb.

We want to replace libusb mainline, not the satellites, regardless of 
how unofficially in use they are. The whole point of libusbx is to have 
people drop whatever libusb they use and switch to libusbx. And if not 
having 1.0.9rc3 in libusbx encourages them to do so, that's even better.

>>> Triage does makes the need to carry 1.0.9-rc3 in our tree unnecessary,
>
> No, you need to be able to identify the commit that introduced the bug.

If it is relevant to your repo, which 1.0.9rc3 isn't, because it never 
belonged to libusb mainline, our starting point. By definition a fork 
starts from a single point on a single branch and doesn't care about 
whatever branches happened below that point. Else, if you're asking us 
to carry a branch, you may as well ask us to carry the whole tree up to 
a certain height (or maybe higher), including all the dead branches 
(because someone may also use them - why should they be any less valid? 
Because they don't have a tag?). That doesn't make sense.

Regards,

/Pete