[Python-Dev] Thoughts fresh after EuroPython (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Sun Jul 25 01:05:19 CEST 2010

On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 2:05 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

On 7/24/2010 10:08 AM, Guido van Rossum wrote:

- Commit privileges: Maybe we've been too careful with only giving commit privileges to to experienced and trusted new developers. I spoke to Ezio Melotti and from his experience with getting commit privileges, it seems to be a case of "the lion is much more afraid of you than you are afraid of the lion". I.e. having got privileges he was very concerned about doing something wrong, worried about the complexity of SVN, and so on. Since we've got lots of people watching the commit stream, I think that there really shouldn't need to be a worry at all about a new committer doing something malicious, and there shouldn't be much worry about honest beginners' mistakes either -- the main worry remains that new committers don't use their privileges enough. My initial inclination is to start with 1 or 2 line patches that I am 99.99% certain are correct. But it has occurred to me that it might be better for Python if I were willing to take a greater than 1/10000 chance of making a mistake. But how much greater? What error rate do you consider acceptable?

Mistakes get made all the time, mostly by experienced committers. When caught quickly they are easy to roll back (that's arguably much of the point of source control :-). New committers can also start with things like docs where there are fewer risks, and more little things that can easily get fixed but aren't for lack of attention. This will help them figure out the source control tools and workflow, which will build up their (and our) confidence, making future success even more likely.

-- --Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)

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