[openstack-dev] [Nova] The unbearable lightness of specs

Kashyap Chamarthy kchamart at redhat.com
Wed Jun 24 14:22:43 UTC 2015


On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 04:09:16PM +0200, Kashyap Chamarthy wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 24, 2015 at 02:51:38PM +0100, Nikola Đipanov wrote:
> > On 06/24/2015 02:33 PM, Matt Riedemann wrote:
> 
> [. . .]
> 
> > > I agree completely. The nicely rendered feature docs which is a
> > > byproduct of the specs process in gerrit is a great part of it. So when
> > > someone is trying to use a new feature or trying to fix a bug in said
> > > feature 1-2 years later and trying to understand the big picture idea,
> > > they can refer to the original design spec - assuming it was accurate at
> > > the time that the code was actually merged. Like you said, it's
> > > important to keep the specs up to date based on what was actually
> > > approved in the code.
> >
> > Of course documentation is good. Make that kind of docs a requirement
> > for merging a feature, by all means.
> > 
> > But the approval process we have now is just backwards. It's only result
> > is preventing useful work getting done.
> > 
> > In addition to what Daniel mentioned elsewhere:
> > 
> > Why do cores need approved specs for example - and indeed for many of us
> > - it's just a dance we do. 

On this part, I fully agree with Dan Smith's reasoning and from my own
observation of other communities I that follow (e.g. KVM/QEMU/libvirt),
every long time dev/reviewer  ('core' in OpenStack parlance)_does_
provide their intent/design thoughts in written form to the list to
discuss, iterate, and get different technical perspectives before going
ahead and implementing them.

> > I refuse to believe that a core can be
> > trusted to approve patches but not to write any code other than a bugfix
> > without a written document explaining themselves, and then have a yet
> > more exclusive group of super cores approve that. It makes no sense.
> 
> This is one of the _baffling_ aspects -- that a so-called "super core"
> has to approve specs with *no* obvious valid reasons.  As Jay Pipes
> mentioned once, this indeed seems like a vestigial remnant from old
> times.

Just to clarify, that I only find it weird that there exists a special
sub-group for specs.

-- 
/kashyap



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