[arc-discuss] [ogb-discuss] Defining OpenSolaris Consolidations

[James Carlson]

John Plocher writes:
> Other than the limits of the source management technology being
> able to handle nested consolidations, there is no reason that
> ON Consolidation couldn't include/depend on a driver consolidation,
> a POSIX-utility consolidation and a GNU-utility consolidation...

I think that stretches the meaning and usefulness of "consolidation"
well past its boundaries.

The usefulness of 'consolidation' as a boundary is based on some
underlying mechanics: that the consolidation bits are built as one
unit, that they're all maintained together so that you can 'grep' or
'cscope' your way through private dependencies, and that they have
some sort of shared integration mechanisms.  And then there are the
patch-generation and related upgrade issues.  Many things here are
outside of the SCM system itself.

In any event, I don't think Stephen was suggesting nesting them at
all.  Instead, he was talking about overlapping *concepts*.  In other
words, multiple consolidations that might be attractive to the same
project.

We have that today, and we tend to answer the question based on a
best-match, because each consolidation has a different set of rules.

> >   
> >   A not-immediately-emotional example is hard to find.  How about a
> >   full-blown device driver Consolidation, overlapping in charter with ON
> >   and X11 (if we stretch)?  Does it matter that each might be soliciting
> 
> IMHO, a OS.o-Project can ONLY be integrated into one and only one
> OS.o-Consolidation.

Strongly agreed, but I don't think that was the issue he was bringing
up.

He was pointing out that if we have overlaps, then projects might find
different homes, and there may well be issues here, such as
disagreements in overall direction between the DD-resident projects
and the ON-resident ones.

I think it's worth considering that as you refactor consolidations,
you should try to make the lines as clear as possible so that there
isn't a great deal of confusion over which consolidation should 'own'
a given project.

-- 
James Carlson, Solaris Networking              <james.d.carlson at sun.com>
Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive         71.232W   Vox +1 781 442 2084
MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757   42.496N   Fax +1 781 442 1677