FreeTDS Development Group

[Brian Bruns <camber AT ais.org>]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, James Cameron wrote:

> Peter Harvey wrote:
> > NOTE: All of the files generated by Makefile.cvs should probably NOT be
> > in cvs.
> 
> Yes, I've mentioned that.  Most other projects avoid putting any such
> files into CVS, thus requiring people who use CVS to download the
> package to have a current set of tools.
> 
> However, this project decided to place the files into CVS because:
> 
> - the CVS download method is the most frequently suggested to solve
> problems, and 
> 
> - that answering questions about the versions of the tools required
> would be a waste of time.
> 
> If this project were a democracy, I'd urge for a vote on which way to
> go, and would vote for removal of generated files.  But I say this
> project is a benevolent dictatorship, and that Brian Bruns is doing
> quite an excellent job, and we can easily cope with the complexity of
> generated files in CVS at this time.  ;-)

Never thought of myself as the benevolent dictator type, I just do most of 
the coding (he with the most code wins!).  But, thanks for the vote of 
confidence.  I imagine there will be a day when we are ready to remove 
configure, libtool, and all the Makefile/Makefile.in's from CVS but as you 
said, as long as I keep pointing people to CVS on a regular basis, this is 
it.  Especially on platforms that don't come native with much gnu stuff 
(*cough* AIX *cough*).
 
> In the meanwhile, someone with CVS access has to have the official job
> of regenerating configure and so on prior to release.  I'm expected that
> is Brian.

Technically, it just sorta happens on its own ;-) At least I haven't been 
bit by it yet.

I'm open to Steve's (?) suggestion in the other post about an autogen.sh 
if someone wants to check one in...I'm too lazy at the moment. :-)

By the way, I've been thinking of redo'ing the website for the 0.53 
release...and wanted some opinions about the ethics of a couple of things 
and what other projects do.

The first is that there is a need for some things for the project.  
Currently, I'm running a donated copy of SQL Server 7 (thank you) on a 
Win2K laptop from my work.  I'd like to (as previously discussed here),  
run this in a vmware session on my primary development box, optionally 
giving access to other developers who need a SQL Server to test against.  
So, VMWare + Win2K Server + SQL Server 2000 is quite a bit of money. But 
it would allow for an easier time finishing up support TDS 8 and domains 
among other things.

So my thought is to have a 'Contributions' sections for those users of 
FreeTDS who would like to contribute monetarily.  Maybe a paypal account 
or something like that.  So, question is, how do other projects handle 
this sort of stuff and what is really required in the way of 
accountability.  I know some larger projects (FSF, XFree, Debian) have 
non-profit status but that is just too much red tape for our little thing.

Second thing, I've done some paid programming on freetds for folks or 
small consulting jobs involving setting it up, etc... I'd like to get 
peoples impressions on whether it'd be appropriate to put in a (small) 
link off to a page detailing that type of thing. (This being a .org site 
and all).

Brian