[cvsnt] Q to CVSNT committers: CVSNT maintenance - how does it happen?

[Kevin McGuire]

Hello CVSNT committer community,

I am the team lead for the Eclipse Team (VCM) support (www.eclipse.org), an
open source software tooling platform.  It is my group that provides the CVS
client for Eclipse.  And a darn fine client it is if I do say so myself :)

I would like to understand the process by which bugs get fixed in CVSNT, the
size of the community of active contributors, and the relationship between
the Linux code base and the CVSNT code base.

In the past, we've made best effort to support CVSNT as a server, but
*officially* we've only supported the Linux server. Naturally, this stance
is less than desirable given the size of the CVSNT community.

One reason for our hesitation is that on occassion a new CVSNT server
version will surface new bugs.  It is important to understand that we are
somewhat sensitive to the implementation details of CVS since we
read/interpret text returned from commands, generate commands, and attempt
to preserve a relatively complex UI state.  Thus a change which might be
innocuous for most CVS users can break our client.  Since we actively use
CVS linux for Eclipse itself, it gets much more in-use testing than CVSNT.

If we understood better the development process, then we might be able to
make a greater commitment to CVSNT.  For example,

Q: If a bug is fixed in the Linux version, how and when does it get migrated
to CVSNT?

Q: Similary, if a new CVS Linux version is released, how does this migrate
to a CVSNT version?

Q: Aside from NT specific areas, do fixes in CVSNT find their way back to
Linux, and how/when?  Or, is there a common code base that always moves
forward on Linux and then is migrated?

Q:  How many active committers are there on CVSNT and how often do they work
on it?  I am trying to understand the size of the push behind CVSNT
maintenance and the frequency.

Q:  What problems do you see with the maintenance process?  For example, do
you find it works well, or do you need more active committers, or committers
who can spend more time on CVSNT?

Q:  Are there people who work on both CVSNT and CVS linux mainteance?

Q:  It seems that the appearance of CVSNT versions is somewhat uncorrelated
with Linux versions.  For example, there may be nothing for CVSNT for
awhile, then several versions (usually minor 'letter' version upgrades).  Is
this accurate, and if so how does this come about?  For example, is it
because a committer will book off some time and work a lot on CVSNT, then
can't for awhile due to requirements of their "day job"?

Any answers to these questions by those active in developing CVSNT would be
highly appreciated.  Since this information may affect our product plans,
frank and accurate data is essential.

Thanking you for your time,
Kevin McGuire