Re: GCJ ------ file type not supported by system

[Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia <guille.rodriguez@gmail.com>]

Hi Mario,

2014-09-01 12:47 GMT+02:00 Mario Torre <neugens@redhat.com>:
[...]
>> Yes I am sure about this, but that is not my point. What I am saying
>> is that it would be very good for the project to be maintained by a
>> team who really wants to move things forward.
>>
>
> I understand what you mean, but the current maintainer has always
> integrated patches and done releases, I think the problem is not the
> lack of one maintainer willing to move forward, is lack of manpower to
> do it.

Well,part of the job of the maintainer for an OSS project, perhaps the
most important one, is to attract and motivate other developers. This
is how the 'lack of manpower' problem is solved.

Just as an example: 0.99 is now over 2 years old, yet the official
Classpath site still lists 0.98 (2009) as "current". 0.99 is not even
listed in the downloads page. If the first thing a developer sees is
that the latest release is more than 5 years old, that does not
exactly help. I already mentioned this in this list, by the way
(https://www.mail-archive.com/classpath@gnu.org/msg15456.html).

Also I am not the first one to raise these concerns. Pekka Enberg
wrote an excellent post about "the future of GNU Classpath" in Dec
2010, and the situation has not changed a lot since then. I cannot
find the original post anymore (the blog was hosted at posterous
spaces, which is no longer available), but the thread in the ML
remains (http://www.spinics.net/lists/gnu-classpath/msg03027.html).
But you already know this of course, since you took part in that
conversation.

>
> As I said, anyone can step in, if patches start to flow (including bug
> fixes) I'm sure they'll be integrated correctly and quickly.
>
> If someone wants to take the project, the best thing to do is to start
> contributing patches. After all, how can the maintainer know if someone
> is seriously willing to take his role if there lack of a serious and
> recent contribution flow?
>

Of course if someone wanted to take on the project, then that would be
the process. I completely agree with you.

At the end what I am saying is that:

1. Development of GNU Classpath seems to be stalled now (quoting from
an earlier post from Andrew Haley: "I have to tell you that Classpath
is not being actively developed, so your problem is unlikely to be
fixed.")

2. This is due to the lack of manpower, which in turn is probably due
to the lack of interested developers, but also to the fact that most
of the development effort of the current team is going to OpenJDK
instead.

3. Given the above, perhaps the current maintainers should consider
switching priorities and start actively looking for a "competent
successor" (as in lesson #5 of ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar").

Best,
-- 
Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia
guille.rodriguez@gmail.com