contributions

[Emmet Hikory]

Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Tuesday 13 May 2008 18:11, Jordan Mantha wrote:
>  > My feeling is that the best way to help make sure this kind of thing
>  > doesn't happen is to have *one*, canonical place to track merges. Launchpad
>  > bugs seems to be the best way we have of doing that currently. Basically,
>  > file a merge bug if you're going to be working on a merge and *all* people
>  > working on merges, including MOTU sponsors, should be looking *first* to
>  > see if somebody has already filed a bug before working on it.
>
>  Personally I'd find a file a bug first rule very demotivating.  One more rule
>  to convince me to spend my time on other things.

    While I can understand the "file a bug first" rule to be
demotivating, I'm inclined to agree with Jordan that waiting to hear
from someone who is marginally active can also be demotivating.  In
essence, anything that blocks the immediate gratification of wanting
something updated and updating it will be demotivating to someone
(including MoM comments: some mergers don't use MoM).  This is further
complicated for those cases where people are involved in Debian and
see merge requests as needing an update in Debian, which might be
waiting for sponsorship at the time someone else wants to process a
merge, but would later be a sync.

    That said, I'm a big fan of the "file a bug first" rule, as it
provides the corresponding "check the outstanding bugs first" rule.
It's this latter rule that I think is more important, as many packages
don't get comprehensive bug triage, and would benefit from periodic
review of the outstanding issues.  Further, it may be that some of
these issues are resolved by the merge, and that others can be
resolved easily at the same time.  By encouraging anyone processing a
merge to review the outstanding bug list against the package at the
time of merge, there is an increased likelihood that other useful
fixes will be done to the package, and that the package will be in a
known good state at the end of the merge, rather than just having had
the previous changes copied blindly.

-- 
Emmet HIKORY