Defining specific problems and handwaving at solutions

Matthew D. Fuller fullermd at over-yonder.net
Thu Nov 12 19:08:30 GMT 2009


On Sun, Nov 08, 2009 at 11:01:36AM +1100 I heard the voice of
Ben Finney, and lo! it spake thus:
> 
> I don't think “rapid evolution of the base” is a good thing in
> general.  That the current practice limits that is an overall
> positive, in my book.

On the other hand, the people still waiting on nested tree support are
going to have words like "glacial" for the rate of evolution, and it
will be uttered with opprobrium, not acclamation.  The people (me
among them) waiting for content filters to reach a high level of
flexibility and support, likewise.


> Right, changes to the core should be subject to a high degree of
> peer review and critical scrutiny. This necessarily involves more
> effort and focus over time, and thus a barrier to casual entry.

And not every change deserves the same bar height.  Right now it seems
like every patch has to meet the same standards, and that's just nuts;
it will never be high enough for some critical things (mention
around-thread about stacking comes to mind[0]), and it will be way too
high for a lot of others.  My suggestion upthread about giving
committers more latitude of judgement for committing things in the
absence of reviews over time speaks to this case.

It's repeatedly the case in every project I've ever worked on, seen,
heard of, or imagined, that "commit it, we'll fix it later" tends
toward very late laters.  And that's a problem.  But maybe we can come
up with some techniques to face it head-on, instead of being routed
around by "don't commit until it's perfect".



[0] Which, funnily enough, had as its major driver for "OMG we need
    this" Launchpad.  That had a lot of Canonical drive behind it.  I
    wonder if it would have been accepted coming from an outside
    developer?



-- 
Matthew Fuller     (MF4839)   |  fullermd at over-yonder.net
Systems/Network Administrator |  http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/
           On the Internet, nobody can hear you scream.



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