Re: [Banshee-List] Google Summer of Code and Banshee

[Gabriel Burt <gabriel burt gmail com>]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 10:15 PM, Mike Urbanski
<michael c urbanski gmail com> wrote:
> I disagree that the project was too ambitious, you and I talked and
> continued to redefine the scope of the project as the summer
> progressed.  I feel that a lot of good code was produced and that much
> of it should be released.

I agree you were very productive, writing a ton of code and adding a
ton of features.  You accomplished all the coding/technical aspects of
the project very successfully, but they were so big, and my leadership
lacking, that we didn't reserve nearly enough time (or change our
process enough) to make getting your work into master easy.

I think one of the main things we did wrong was with rewriting the
Podcast plugin and Migo library, instead of modifying them in place.
I think using one big branch for the whole summer was probably a bad
procedure too.  Instead, we could have said outright that you'd use
maybe 4 branches during the summer, and have hard deadlines for each
to be merged back into master - enforcing smaller, easily reviewable
changesets.  However, if I'd just spent more time keeping up with your
changes, reviewing it, etc, maybe none of that would really be
necessary.  In my defense, you were prolific!

I feel like Banshee is getting to a more stable, mature place.  Part
of that is the incremental changes we make - each component has years
of tiny niggly bug fixes in it now, and part of it is Aaron's
cultivated and my growing risk aversion.  I'd be more comfortable
trying to replace Migo/Podcasting incrementally -- is that possible to
do w/ your changes (even if it might be quite a bit more work)?

Glad to hear from you, Mike, thanks for all your work, and good luck
with the job search.

Gabriel