Re: Postgres development model (was Re: CVS comment)

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl> writes:
> I don't think it was a problem of committers. To me it was a problem of
> reviewers. Those are very scarce (for the bigger items it's mostly only
> Tom).

Yah. We have plenty of people authorized to commit, and we add more
on a pretty regular basis. (FWIW, Alvaro, you are high on the list
of people to appoint as new committers.) The problem is finding
adequate review talent. You don't have to be a committer to help review
patches --- feel free to look at anything that goes by, and if you see
a problem say so! But the difficulty is that PG is a pretty large and
complex system, and it takes a good deal of familiarity with it to spot
some of the more esoteric problems.

Right at the moment we are a bit short of uber-hackers. Vadim Mikheev
knew a lot about the code, but he's dropped out of sight and not been
replaced. Tom Lockhart is sorely missed as well. You, Manfred, and
Neil are up-and-coming but you each probably need another couple years
fooling with the code before you really have the full wizard's rating.

I don't have any magic solution to this. I do say that people who know
the code get there by doing things with it --- at least that's how I got
there --- so I certainly encourage anyone with the time and interest
to pursue it. When you see a bizarre bug report, find the cause and
fix it. Or pick a project that you almost know how to do, but not
quite, and learn until you can do it. Repeat as needed.

> Maybe a better SCM could help with this, but I doubt it.

I haven't seen any particular reason why we should adopt another SCM.
Perhaps BitKeeper or SubVersion would be better for our purposes than
CVS, but are they enough better to justify the switchover costs?
I doubt it.

regards, tom lane