Open Stack

On 30 April 2013 12:59, Sean Dague <sean at dague.net> wrote:
> On 04/29/2013 06:48 PM, Russell Bryant wrote:
>>
>> On 04/29/2013 06:39 PM, Sullivan, Jon Paul wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I think this article gives a good argument for "disabled-by-default".  It
>>> is a valid way to retain small commits to the code base which are easily
>>> reviewable whilst enabling developers to continue development on the feature
>>> in a safe way.  Without this you may lose the ability to keep commits small
>>> enough to be digestible to reviewers.
>>>
>>> http://rc3.org/2013/03/03/dont-get-stuck/
>>
>>
>> I think you can develop a feature in its entirety with a series of
>> reasonably sized changes with a well designed patch set.
>>
>> Once code gets in to the tree, it becomes a burden on the project to
>> maintain that code, even if disabled by default.  If your feature isn't
>> done, I don't want it in the tree.
>
>
> +1.
>
> The etsy example breaks down in the community in that there is no reason
> someone's half baked code is actually going to get completed later. Until
> it's working, it's technical debt, and, honestly is probably going to be
> deleted by one of the many janitors that run through purging unused /
> unusable code.

How might we mitigate that? I think unfinished stuff being cleaned up
is a great think; new code coming in shouldn't be exempt from that,
but perhaps a grace period of a few weeks?

> Make a clean patch series, a high priority blueprint, and let folks know
> review time is needed. I've seen new blueprints land in only a couple of
> days when structured and flagged as such, and the community knows it's
> coming.

If we're talking about 10 or 20 or more patches in a patch series,
that *scares* me : I find it hard to believe that that has fully
matured and been driven at scale under production load. This is
exactly what we want to fix: those things should come in disabled, so
that they can mature safely.

-Rob
-- 
Robert Collins <rbtcollins at hp.com>
Distinguished Technologist
HP Cloud Services