[Developers] Accessing current source code

[Ben Bolker]

On 10-08-19 03:12 PM, Arni Magnusson wrote:
> Hi Ben, these are valid points.
> 
> I'm not sure how old the 'public' SVN version is. It may date back to the 
> last formal release of ADMB 9.1 (31 Dec 2009), equivalent to downloading 
> and unzipping admb-9.1-src.zip. The reported SVN revision 74 makes no 
> sense, as version 9.1 corresponds to revision 496.
> 
> Like you point out, this can be frustrating and undermines user 
> participation in the development of ADMB. Similar free software projects 
> have anonymous read-only access to the actual source repository, so anyone 
> can view the code in real time.
> 
> That level of open source enforces development discipline; at any given 
> time, build errors should be very rare and quickly fixed.
> 
> My guess is that ADMB has not reached that point, or has reached it very 
> recently. If I checkout the source code right now, I wouldn't assume that 
> it builds.

  A minor comment:

  in my opinion it's OK to have a publicly accessible development SVN
repository that is frequently broken. That's what 'bleeding-edge' means.
Not broken is nicer, of course, and if developers get embarrassed by
having their dirty laundry on display and start being more careful not
to break the development version that's great, but people who choose to
use the development version have been warned: they should be willing to
take what they get and/or should have the technical expertise to revert
to a version that isn't broken.

  cheers
    Ben