Re: Commit fest queue

On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 1:06 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> I assume you also read this Apache heading:
>
> What if my patch gets ignored?
>
> Because Apache has only a small number of volunteer developers,
> and these developers are often very busy, it is possible that your
> patch will not receive any immediate feedback.
> ...
> Be persistent but polite. Post to the developers list pointing
> out your patch and why you feel it is important. Feel free to do
> this about once a week and continue until you get a response.
>
> This indicates to me that their patch system doesn't work too well in
> practice. ;-)
>
> Perhaps Apache is a more mature technology or more poorly managed. I
> can't imagine us requring an FAQ entry like that about ignored patches.
>

Well, sadly, we probably *do* need such an entry in the FAQ. Without
meaning any disrespect to Bruce's tremendous efforts, I have had up to
2 months -- months! -- elapse between sending a patch to -patches and
getting the standard "your patch is in the queue" email from Bruce.

Now that I'm used to the process, I understand that eventually Bruce
will trawl the mailing list and queue-ify my email. But you can see
that any new submitters are going to wonder what went wrong after a
week or two. "Did I send my patch to the wrong place? Is nobody
interested in it? What is going on here?"

I'm not saying Bruce is doing a bad job, far from it. I'm saying the
job is impossible.

I just wanted to correct the apparent impression that "patches don't
get ignored here". Patches get ignored. The difference between us
and Apache is we pretend it doesn't happen and don't suggest to
submitters what action to take when it does. Which puts Apache ahead
of us IMO.

Cheers,
BJ