Is GAMBIT open development or only open source?

[matthewfeickert]

Related to fixing outdated CMake patterns for hep-packaging-coordination/packaging-hep-simulation-stack#9, as there is no contributing guidelines, zero PRs, and this repository's default branch is a release branch, it is unclear to me if GAMBIT is openly developed, or if GAMBIT is closed development and this repository exists only to open source the releases. Can a developer comment on this?

[anderkve]

Hi @matthewfeickert -- correct, currently GAMBIT has open source releases, but the development repo is private. (Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.)

Maybe we will move to public development in the future, but there is no concrete plan for this atm.

[patscott]

Worth noting that we do accept PRs submitted to the public repos though - when accepted we merge them into the dev master to appear in the next release.

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On Thu, 3 Apr 2025, 8:15 pm Anders Kvellestad, ***@***.***> wrote: Hi @matthewfeickert <https://github.com/matthewfeickert> -- correct, currently GAMBIT has open source releases, but the development repo is private. (Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.) Maybe we will move to public development in the future, but there is no concrete plan for this atm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJRC6I43NRELSWEEDI7OOD2XUC2TAVCNFSM6AAAAAB2LKJ74OVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDONZVGIYDCNJYG4> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***> [image: anderkve]*anderkve* left a comment (GambitBSM/gambit_2.6#4) <#4 (comment)> Hi @matthewfeickert <https://github.com/matthewfeickert> -- correct, currently GAMBIT has open source releases, but the development repo is private. (Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.) Maybe we will move to public development in the future, but there is no concrete plan for this atm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJRC6I43NRELSWEEDI7OOD2XUC2TAVCNFSM6AAAAAB2LKJ74OVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDONZVGIYDCNJYG4> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[patscott]

...and PRs updating to modern cmake in particular would be very welcome 😁

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On Thu, 3 Apr 2025, 8:15 pm Anders Kvellestad, ***@***.***> wrote: Hi @matthewfeickert <https://github.com/matthewfeickert> -- correct, currently GAMBIT has open source releases, but the development repo is private. (Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.) Maybe we will move to public development in the future, but there is no concrete plan for this atm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJRC6I43NRELSWEEDI7OOD2XUC2TAVCNFSM6AAAAAB2LKJ74OVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDONZVGIYDCNJYG4> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***> [image: anderkve]*anderkve* left a comment (GambitBSM/gambit_2.6#4) <#4 (comment)> Hi @matthewfeickert <https://github.com/matthewfeickert> -- correct, currently GAMBIT has open source releases, but the development repo is private. (Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.) Maybe we will move to public development in the future, but there is no concrete plan for this atm. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAJRC6I43NRELSWEEDI7OOD2XUC2TAVCNFSM6AAAAAB2LKJ74OVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMZDONZVGIYDCNJYG4> . You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[matthewfeickert]

Thanks for the info. GAMBIT v2.6 is still technically buildable with cmake <4.0, but fails with errors (edit: Okay, looks like dependencies are just not specified correctly, but maybe no errors.) if you attempt to build the current release, but is fully unbuildable (as in it is disallowed by CMake itself) with CMake v4.0+ (which, to be clear, is super recent). This is mostly due to currently forcing old (CMake as a project views CMake v3.5 as old) and no longer recommended CMake policies via

gambit_2.6/CMakeLists.txt

Line 41 in d102ac2

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8.12 FATAL_ERROR)

instead of using the <policy_max> argument

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.6...3.31)

c.f. https://cmake.org/cmake/help/latest/command/cmake_minimum_required.html

Maybe we will move to public development in the future

That would be great. Is there a reason why development is private? Is it the same idea as PYTHIA's model where the developers want to embargo the tooling they create until they have the ability to do their own research and publish with it and then the public releases are made as open source artifacts? I'm not going to be so arrogant as to tell people how to develop their software and collaboration policies, but I'm of the (admittedly very biased) opinion that open development is far more of a boon than a publication risk (I know that's also a very experiment-world centric take as well).

PRs updating to modern cmake in particular would be very welcome

These would be easy to contribute, and then nice to make patches to fix builds to make a conda-forge release possible but...

Worth noting that we do accept PRs submitted to the public repos though - when accepted we merge them into the dev master to appear in the next release.

...if I'm being honest this makes me want to not contribute at all. To me this reads (very much understand this is not your intention or tone, but just conveying what my brain views as the resulting reality) as "you can make contributions but you actually have no idea what the target branch content is so good luck not hitting any merge conflicts that might ultimately make your contribution redundant or difficult enough to merge that it won't show up for a year if ever."

Though, with a low threshold for joining the GAMBIT Community, and through that gain developer access.

What are the thresholds / requirements / contribution expectations?

[patscott]

Fair comments re open source vs open development -- I personally agree with them all, but it's (now) an active discussion in the collaboration so let's let that run its course. It probably shouldn't take too long to converge.

I'll let @anderkve as current Head comment further on the membership process & requirements.

As to cmake stuff, let's consolidate discussion on that to #5 .