Re: [evolution-patches] Hidden agendas and Soft Targets [Was: Re: Warning fixes]

[Harish Krishnaswamy <kharish novell com>]

On Wed, 2006-10-18 at 15:10 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote: 
> hi,
> 
> Am Mittwoch, den 18.10.2006, 15:31 +0530 schrieb Harish Krishnaswamy:
> > When bugzilla or e-p does not get addressed by the module
> > hackers, a friendly poke or a pop-up radar usually gets it covered - as
> > Andre/Matthew Barnes would know.
> 
> yes, but should poking really be necessary all the time?
> it ain't cool to *beg* for important stuff to get done, especially if
> the important stuff is not that hard to recognize (in bugzilla, we have
> target milestones, we have severity/priority - what else do we need?
> another wiki page, another mailing list rant/discussion as we had for
> the 2.6 UI changes?). 

My comment was to say that it helps to get things moving - it was not to
say that it is a necessary condition to have a patch reviewed.

Unfortunately, in the case of Evolution - important stuff *is* indeed
hard to recognize purely on the basis of severity/priority alone -
simply because the traffic is much more to handle than there are hands
and eye-balls.

I do feel really sad about your comment. I would not term the friendly
nudge - as 'begging' nor I think you would have thought the same a few
days ago.

> use bugzilla correctly, be careful with target milestones, take a look
> at the "urgent" or "blocker" issues regularly, review patches - this
> only seems to have happened partially for the last development cycles,
> and i unfortunately don't expect any improvements in the short run. :-/

Dude, we have walked together too long in this journey for me to respond
to that comment here but there is enough data open out there for anyone
to find out if interested.


> > Shreyas :  Thanks for voicing your support. Also, let me clarify that
> > non-Novell maintainers reviewing/approving patches has been in-place for
> > years even while you were on board with us.  
> [...]
> > Andre has been approving i18n/Documentation related
> > patches for more than a release now.

> i did because i was annoyed of waiting for nothing to happen, so this
> isn't an example of potential non-novell maintainers, but quite
> contrary: the reviews weren't fast enough or didn't take place at all,
> so at some point i told myself: well, even if i break something, why
> should i care? better to break something from time to time, then to not
> have any progress at all.

If my memory serves me right, you had initially approached me and asked
if you could commit some of the patches that had not been looked into by
the team - prior to committing them.

Given the fact that you had spotted many of those bugs and the fixes
were quite straight forward (mostly string changes, dupes in keyboard
shortcuts, updating last version numbers or credits) - it was but
natural to let you do commits on those patches.  I do not remember you
breaking any serious stuff. Believe me - I would have caught you if you
had strayed into commits on other modules w/o a look-in :-), though I
can only think of you catching one of us missing a step on the rules,
never, _you_ bending one, pal.


When I preferred the doc changes last release to be reviewed by you
first - I was acting on the same belief.


> > If anyone is interested in shouldering responsibilities, you are
> > welcome.  Just start reviewing patches and build your contributions.
> 
> means that everybody can review patches and commit them, without asking
> the maintainer? sounds interesting. :-)

Read me carefully, please. Reviewing patches - does not always equal to
getting ahead and committing them. 
I just meant  ' Hey,  btw, I tested this patch and works for me. But  X
may not exactly fit to what I think the module normally does '  goes a
much longer way than 'X proj is dead. Nobody looks at anything anymore.'


> (no offense intended here, i'd just like to share my impression of the
> current state.)
> 
I do acknowledge your feelings and sense of disappointment, agree on
more than one counts - but just do not understand the sweeping
generalizations that brush away a lot of good work with the rest. It is
saddening when it comes from a friend and somebody who has contributed
so much to this project.



> cheers,
> andre
>