[Twisted-Python] Project policies Re: Twisted-commits] r17325 ...

[Cory Dodt]

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I don't object to asking for the information to be there.  I don't object to
emailing people to ask them not to leave out important stuff.  I don't even
*necessarily* object to pedantic formatting, although I think it's far more
important that the information be there, not that it be typed in RFC 822*.

I do object to aspects of how this is handled publicly.  For example, why does
the only document I can find on the subject:
<http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/BranchPolicy> not mention a rigid format
for commit messages?  In fact, it doesn't mention the commit messages at all.
 In fact, the document is labelled "some guy's opinion", although it is in
facted titled "Policy", which is a pretty mixed message.  This page
<http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedDevelopment> doesn't mention it
either.  (It also doesn't mention the coding standard, documentation standard,
etc. but that's the subject of another rant.)

If you're going to have an official policy, and you're going to publicly
chastise people on the mailing list, you'd better make sure the whole world
knows what the rules are before you do so.  I do not consider "Re:
[Twisted-commits] r17325 ..." to be the title of an official policy document.

And here's where I'm coming from.  We are creating a higher standard for
committers, I understand that.  We believe we are getting higher quality code
and better turnaround for releases out of it, I understand that.  But the
approach being taken is to just blast people for not doing it right; bad
enough on its own, doubly bad for not having warned them first.  This is
discouraging to those of us who are occasional committers, and it's even more
discouraging to people who love to work in Twisted and hope to get the
"commit" level of trust someday themselves.

I think the correct approach is to discuss the policy on IRC, then to waste NO
TIME posting the contents of the discussion to the Wiki, then to announce the
wiki page on the mailing list.  If anyone objects, and probably very few will,
you might have to revise the policy a bit.  *then* you can ding people, but at
least try to work with them in private first.

C


*(I did know about the trac integration thing, but I consider that to be
almost useless as it's so easy to add this information to the bug manually.)


Christopher Armstrong wrote:
> On 6/21/06, Cory Dodt <corydodt at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:
>> I'm all for a structured development process, but this is just being
>> pedantic
>> for the sake of being pedantic.  Please tell me, how does following
>> this rigid
>> log message structure help speed twisted development?  How does it
>> contribute
>> to the overall quality of Twisted in any substantive way?
>>
>> >  <line of 78 or fewer characters summarizing change>
>>
>> Be serious.  The haranguing about this kind of stuff is getting so
>> tiresome
>> that I've stopped making any serious attempts to commit to the trunk. 
>> As long
>> as the necessary information is in there, who the heck cares how it's
>> formatted?  I see that glyph looked at the bug and pronounced it
>> acceptable.
>> It was possible to look this up in the bug, which is how I found out,
>> spending
>> all of 10 seconds on it.
> 
> While I don't care so much  how it's 78 characters, I *do* care about
> all the missing information in that commit message, given that I'm one
> of the guys who has to read through commit logs while building a NEWS
> file for the release. This is a good policy and everyone's been
> following it beautifully for a while now.
> 

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