[Python-Dev] whither PEP 407 and 413 (release cycle PEPs)? (original) (raw)

Hynek Schlawack hs at ox.cx
Sun Jun 3 14:47:30 CEST 2012

Am 03.06.12 13:22, schrieb "Martin v. Löwis":

- Some contributors are worried about getting their contributions "out", and some core committers are worried that we get fewer contributions because of that.

While I well recall the feeling of getting changes "out", the real concerns only exist for the very first contribution: * Those gurus on python-dev are certainly working on a fix for this very important issue already, how could they not have noticed? My work will be futile, and they'll fix it the day before I submit the patch. * Now that the patch is uploaded, can somebody please review it? How hard can it be to look over 20 lines of code? * Now that they committed it, when can I start telling my friends about it? The next release takes ages, and waiting is not fun. While these concerns are all real, it's really a matter of contributor education to deal with them, The longer people contribute to open source (or participate in any kind of software development), the more they learn that this is just how things work. The PEP really only addresses the third concern, whereas I think that the second is much more relevant.

As a newish core developer I’d like to stress that Martin is 100% right here.

Point three was never an issue to me – the biggest satisfaction is seeing the actual commit with the own name and the appearing in ACKS – you can already tell your friends/tweet/blog about it at this point. And people do.

OTOH point two is very frustrating. The most colorful bikeshed is still much better than ignored patches. Personally, I gave up on CPython after my patches languished for weeks until Antoine revived the tickets three months later.

I'm sure we've lost plenty of talent this way already and if we want to attract more talented contributors, this is the issue to tackle. The release process has nothing to do with that.

I guess the PEPs (especially 413) are more about the bad rap the stdlib has been getting lately (e.g. <http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/04/where-modules-go-to-die/>).

As for us not getting enough contributions: can we please worry about that when we have all patches processed that already have been contributed?

Realistically, that means "never".

Cheers, Hynek

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