Re: small but useful patches for text search

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:59 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas wrote:
>> I personally think that the way pgsql-hackers organizes itself using
>> email is completely insane.  The only reason that you need to write
>> the release notes instead of, say, me, is because the only information
>> on what needs to go into them is buried in a thicket of CVS commit
>> messages that I am not nearly brave enough to attempt to penetrate.  I
>> suggested putting them in CVS yesterday; Tom didn't like that, but
>> what about a wiki page or a database?  grep 'release notes'
>> /last/six/months/of/email can't possibly be the best way to do this.
>> Given any sort of list to work from, even one that is totally
>> disorganized and written in broken English, I can't believe this is
>> more than an hour or two of work, and I'd be more than happy to take a
>> crack at it (I'm probably not the only one, either).
>
> Let me just add, as a way of macro-understanding our approach to
> development, that the Postgres community has always been set up to get
> the maximum feedback from the community, even if it sometimes increases
> the work required by a few core folks to keep things going.
>
> So some of the things we do that seem inefficient are done because many
> feel a more structured approach would limit our ability to harness the
> strengths of our community.  For example, moving to a bug tracking
> system would make some things much easier, but would probably dampen our
> momentum.  Handling discussions via web forums instead of email would
> probably have the same effect.  Of course, I might be wrong, but that is
> what many in the community think.

Oh, I'm not objecting to email as a way of communicating. I think a
bug tracking system or web forums would increase the amount of effort
required to keep up to date on what is going on, and I can't imagine
what the corresponding advantage would be. What I don't like is the
use of email as an *organizational* tool, because (even with Google)
it's hard to go back to a pile of email and fish out the items that
are still relevant. If there's a list of things that need to be put
into the release notes or a list of things that need to be done by 8.4
or a list of patches that need to be reviewed, I think it makes sense
to have an explicit list of some kind.

I think there is near-universal agreement that the CommitFest wiki has
been very succesful. I've certainly spent a lot of time keeping it up
to date, which wouldn't have been possible with the old system, and I
at least find it much easier to refer to. I don't see why the same
thing couldn't be done with release notes. Heikki asked this week
where he should document an item to mentioned in the release notes,
and the answer was in the CVS commit message. If the answer had been,
in a wiki page, he wouldn't have minded, and if we did that
consistently for a whole release cycle, it would probably save you
quite a bit of time finding everything again at the end. Or so it
seems to me; but I might be wrong.

> I think the example of moving the TODO list to a wiki, that was supposed
> to relive a lot of the burden I carry to maintain the TODO list, has
> really not affected my workload much, which kind of reinforces the
> feeling that our existing setup is probably the best we are going to do.
> Of course, the commit fest wikis have helped, so I guess there is room
> for improvement in some places.

Well, the TODO list, because it's traditionally been filtered by you,
carries the implication that the items therein are not just any old
thing that's been suggested by someone, but things where there was
some level agreement (from you, if not from anyone else, but that
carries some weight all by itself) that they might be worthwhile.
Maybe that wasn't your intention, but I think people see it that way
to some degree.

My concern with the list of outstanding items for 8.4 based on a quick
look is that I think many of those things are not, in fact,
outstanding items for 8.4, and those that are may not be important
enough to hold up beta for. Now since I haven't read through them all
yet, I'm not 100% sure of that, but that's my concern for what it's
worth.

...Robert