[kepler-dev] Why I can't work: a plea for stability

[Edward A. Lee]

At 07:12 PM 4/20/2006, Matt Jones wrote:
>While there are some advantages of the idiosyncratic approach, there 
>are also drawbacks.  Kepler has features, such as search across all 
>actors and UI configurability, which are neither present in ptolemy 
>not possible with ptolemy's current ad-hoc approach to actor management.

I have to dispute this....  Google doesn't impose any
architecture on the data it searches :-)

On UI configurability, I have my doubts... Why should you be able
to change the way my actor looks? :-)

As for this one:

>In terms of the build fragility, we've seen that breakage in both 
>the kepler and the ptolemy trees is fairly regular -- I'd say its 
>about 50/50 in terms of whether its the Kepler tree or the ptolemy 
>tree that causes a problem at any given time in the Kepler build.

I think the real problem here is that there are Ptolemy developers
who don't regularly test the Kepler build when they make changes
(I confess!  sorry...)  It would be nice if this were simpler, but
with two entirely different build processes, this is harder than
it might be...  While we always try to make changes backward compatible,
when there is code duplication (like replacement classes), this strategy
fails.  So Christopher's efforts to eliminate the code duplication we
currently have should help.

BTW: The Ptolemy build itself very rarely breaks...  But this is probably
also due to the fact that there are fewer people actively working on
core parts of it, and those doing active work are sequestered in separate
packages (something that is enabled by the "idiosyncratic approach").
Believe me, we would all be more unhappy if any execution of Ptolemy
depended on the current code generation work being error-free...

Edward



------------
Edward A. Lee
Professor, Chair of the EE Division, Associate Chair of EECS
231 Cory Hall, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-1770
phone: 510-642-0253 or 510-642-0455, fax: 510-642-2845
eal at eecs.Berkeley.EDU, http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~eal