[Python-Dev] Developer resources (was Re: Stability and change) (original) (raw)

Aahz aahz@pythoncraft.com
Mon, 8 Apr 2002 18:36:55 -0400

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002, Jeremy Hylton wrote:

It seems like adopting a Linux-style development branch makes lots of extra work and doesn't buy Python much extra testing or stability. What you're calling experimental releases, we currently call cvs checkout :-). I'm happy to keep truly experimental stuff in CVS between releases and aim for stability with each 2.x / minor release.

I'm picking this post as a convenient tag for changing the direction of the conversation a bit:

I believe that the key issue I've seen mentioned in this thread is the lack of downloads for alpha/beta releases. In turn, that brings up the whole issue of expanding the development and QA resources available to Python as a whole.

What I'm seeing in this discussion is an assumption that there's no simple way to expand the available eyeballs. I hope that's wrong. Let's try having a discussion about ways to change that.

My experience is that I've been unwilling until recently to participate heavily in development because all I had was a Win98 box. Tim Peters aside, I think most people think of Win98 as a lousy platform for development. But even now that I've finally got a Madrake 8.1 box set up, I'm still proceeding more slowly than I'd prefer because I don't want to screw up my box (I've already had many more problems than I expected installing Mandrake). That's aside from little issues like not knowing how to use CVS or my 56k connection or SF bug submissions not working with Lynx.

I think I'm fairly typical of the crowd that we'd like to add to the Python resources: reasonably competent technically (but with a lot of gaps in knowledge/skills), but also a bit gunshy of pushing limits too quickly.

Here are a couple of suggestions:

"There are times when effort is important and necessary, but this should not be taken as any kind of moral imperative." --jdecker