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Re: stabilization & number of changes

From: Greg Hudson <ghudson_at_MIT.EDU>
Date: 2004-01-06 00:16:20 CET

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 14:35, kfogel@collab.net wrote:
> > I didn't ask to put off branching, but I'd like to see a
> > bit less reticence to fix API problems among the CollabNet crowd, since
> > that same crowd does not appear to have put much consideration into the
> > API before driving the stabilization process.

> The CollabNet developers put as much thought into APIs as anyone else.

> If we (I mean everyone, not some subgroup of developers) made poor API
> choices, then we made poor API choices.

I'm not saying that CollabNet developers made more API mistakes than
anyone else during the general course of svn development. I'm talking
specifically about an attitude towards the relationship between API and
the 1.0 release. Here's my perspective:

  * There was a push, largely from inside CollabNet, to stabilize and
    release 1.0 starting with 0.35. This decision seemed to be based
    largely on the state of the issue tracker and the lack of critical
    bug reports from users.

  * There was a corresponding push, largely from outside CollabNet, to
    make sure that 1.0 is not just good from a usability perspective but
    also a good platform to build on (mostly in terms of the API).

  * There has been pushback against this second push, largely from
    inside CollabNet. (To be fair, mostly just from kfogel and gstein,
    and Karl has been constructive and non-obstructionist as he pushes
    back.)

Moreover, this has been a pattern going back a long time. I originally
classed issue #999 as beta, because of its far-reaching API
implications, but gstein unilaterally overruled that classification.

I'm not saying it's inherently wrong to think of the API as a
second-class feature of the 1.0 release and not worry too much about
it. perl clearly thinks of its C API that way and that doesn't seem to
have impeded it's popularity. But I would be happier if the people who
feel that way would not stand in the path of those of us who are trying
to maximize the likelihood that the 1.0 API is not tentative and won't
need incompatible fixing in the medium term.

(On every point except the date parser, there appears to be common
ground. But on that one point, gstein is standing quite firmly in the
way, and he does not appear to have followed up on his veto so far, so I
am still quite steamed about it.)

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Received on Tue Jan 6 00:17:05 2004

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