Garrett Rooney wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Max Bowsher <maxb1@ukf.net> wrote:
>
>> Once again, sorry for broaching such bikesheddy issue. I'm sorely
>> concious that if I hadn't noticed that, we might have a RC5 within a few
>> hours, but having noticed it, I could not in good conscience not take
>> action to correct what I believe was a severe UI and API wart.
>
> Oh please, you're dramatically overstating the importance of this
> change. The flag may be obscure, but its use case is also obscure,
> there's no reason we should be wasting anyone's time on it when the
> vast majority of users will never even need to know of its existence.
It's a wart. Wart's aren't fatal, but they don't help anyone's
impressions of Subversion. Since this is something that we are locked
in to for 1.x once we release, I feel it had to be brought up, and it
had to be brought up now.
> This is 100% a bikeshed issue, and there is zero reason to bring it up
> at this point in the release cycle. We have enough trouble fixing
> actual problems, there's no reason to actively go looking for
> pointless ones.
That's the thing: *why* is it a bikeshed issue? It's a simple, dare I
say trivial, renaming operation, for which I have explained the
rationale. I hoped, and continue to do so, that people will recognize it
as such: a trivial fix for some poorly-chosed terminology.
> For what it's worth, I would have +1ed it myself just to get the damn
> thing off the radar except that I don't want to encourage people to
> drop changes like this onto us at the last minute and then rush them
> into a release so they can't be reverted, and I figured it was
> incredibly likely that someone would object and require us to reroll
> the RC anyway. And look, in response to one of the other emails about
> this Brane already has objected. Please, just revert the change and
> let us get on with this release.
I see and recognize what you are saying about not encouraging
late-breaking changes, but there is a different precedent that I am more
concerned about not setting: I do not want it to be accepted that
sometimes we sacrifice quality, even of things we are then obliged to
keep for the entirety of 1.x, to get a release out sooner.
The reactions of committers so far have been:
You and Justin: Irked by the delay, but not commenting on the change itself.
David James: Expressed tentative positive reaction, on reading my email.
Brane: Expressed misgivings, to which I responded with counter-arguments
which, IMO, dispel them.
That's not an adequate weight of opinion to recommend reverting as a
course of action to me - not when the sole negative reaction against the
change (rather than its timing) is one that I think I have suitably
logically countered.
Max.
Received on Wed Aug 23 11:48:53 2006