[GSoC] Merge branches (to all GSoC students)

[Ethan Blanton]

I think some of this email is somewhat premature.  Let me address the
first few points.  I understand where you're coming from, Tomasz, but
bear in mind that many of these concerns are the responsibilities of
the *mentors*, not the students.  Student branches won't merge until
mentors give the nod.

Tomasz Wasilczyk spake unto us the following wisdom:
> this year's GSoC is over and all of you sent reports of the tasks
> being successfully finished. Some of you claims about being ready to
> merge. I'd like to draw your attention to some aspects of really being
> ready to merge:
> 
> - Is your code building on win32? The current main branch does.

This isn't a hard-and-fast requirement for merge, nor is building in
any other particular configuration.  We simply have to believe that
any such failures are fixable, and the merge is worth it.

> - Is your branch compiling without any warnings?

Ditto.

> - Generally: don't break things. Are there any TODOs in your code that
> removes some previously present functionality? Maybe something doesn't
> work as previous, because there is some more work to be done?

For 3.0.0, there *will* be regressions before we're feature-complete.
The key is general forward progress.

> - Have you tested your build under valgrind? You can use the following call:
> $ valgrind --leak-check=no --suppressions=valgrind-suppressions pidgin
> -d > pidgin.log 2>valgrind.log

This is, of course, good advice for any and all changes.

> This year's projects are rather extensive and touches many parts of
> the project. That means, they can interfere with each other. Have you
> been thinking of the order of merges?

This is something that mentors and students will have to work out.
There will be some merging pain, and someone will have to bear it.  If
that's the price for the kind of activity we got this summer, though,
it's a bargain.

> It's nice that all of you declared the wiliness to work on your
> projects after the end of GSoC. However, don't rely on such desires
> when planning of tasks needed for merge - student's duties on
> university often make such plans failed. As an example, please look at
> last year's statistics plugin GSoC project - it was "ready to merge",
> but it isn't merged for the whole year.

This is a good point.  The statistics project is far from alone in
this respect.  We have maybe half a dozen branches in this state.
However, we've seen many projects ultimately merge, as well -- it's as
much a matter of making time as having time.

Ethan
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