Re: [Discussion] The architecture of Scalar (and others) within Git

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

Even so, I targeted `contrib/` with my patch series because
`contrib/README` says:

    The intention is to keep interesting tools around git here, maybe
    even experimental ones, to give users an easier access to them,
    and to give tools wider exposure, so that they can be improved
    faster.

Does this README's intent still apply, or has the purpose of contrib/
changed?

The intent may still be the same, but my suspicion is that the world
has changed sufficiently to make contrib/ that is offered with such
an intent no longer is useful.  In other words, "contrib/" as a
nursery may have been our dream, but the dream did not materialize
and may have outlived its usefulness.

Would you like me to organize the code and patches such that they more
clearly fall under your maintenance once the patches are merged? If that
is your preference, I will gladly put in the work.

When I submitted the Scalar patches, I did not want to burden you with
maintaining it, I expected to maintain Scalar going forward, but maybe
that is not your preference? I assumed it to be my maintenance burden, we
aim to support backward compatibility for existing Scalar users, after
all. Absolutely everything else, however, is up for discussion, subject to
the full scrutiny of the community and to the same standards of a
submission to the core of the project.

And I see your point about backward compatibility: The Git project has
plenty of experience with maintaining backward compatibility and _still_
improving on initial designs. I therefore can easily give up my hard “this
command-line interface must not be changed” stance.

It depends on how you define "maintenance".

Many parts of the system (e.g. difftool, commit-graph, pack bitmaps,
multi-pack index, sparse-index, po, and gitweb) may "fall under my
maintenance", but you can see that I am not heavily involved in any
of these areas, other than serving mostly as a traffic cop.  If a
patch that touches some area comes, I may trust input from folks who
are more deeply involved in the area (e.g. input from Taylor better
than from other folks, including mine, for a patch that touches
midx) when deciding if the patch needs revising or if it is ready.

I would expect that is more or less how things would work for
anything that is in my tree.  And I do not think it would be any
different for Scalar.  I would expect that any bugfixes or new
features would be redirected to you folks.  Ehh, not that you would
need redirecting---I'd expect you'd jump on them even _before_ I
would react ;-)