Re: Formatting Curmudgeons WAS: MMAP Buffers

On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 8:54 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
>> I would imagine one commit fest per month, but
>> it's only a week long.
>
> BTW, just as a thought experiment: what about a one-day CF once a week?
> "Patch Tuesdays", if you will.  Spend all day reviewing/committing,
> bounce back whatever is not ready, patch authors try again next week.
>
> Really large patches are not going to fit into that paradigm, probably,
> but an awful lot of stuff would --- and it might help encourage more
> incremental development of the big ones, too.

I'm responding to this post with mostly general comments, not directed
specifically at Tom.

Speeding up the process means that people with more time get a bigger
say and people with less time get a smaller input than before. I'm
already concerned that the gap between patch submission and patch
commit is so short it effectively means feedback is impossible.

The more frequently we do integration, the greater proportion of our
time is spent doing that.

My concern is there are a relatively low number of people working on
features that lots of people care about. Senior time should not be
wasted on endless integration.

We should be encouraging people to spend more time on more useful
features, not an endless stream of trivial patches, integration and
release processes. None of our users give a flying, err, squirrel,
about our small patch review process. Especially when its absolutely
brilliant already.

My model of contributing to this project has always been to spend time
with customers, understanding solutions and problems, then bringing
that back to the community. That has brought both the funding to allow
me to contribute and a stream of ideas with a clear focus. I encourage
others to do the same. I don't think we should be working on an
interrupt driven model, we should be planning our contributions and
making sure we make the biggest impact possible with real code, not
just twittering about it constantly. If we spend too much time with
each other we will be exactly like the larger commercial development
groups who never meet users only each other. Even the General list
isn't fully representative of the actual/potential user base.

--
 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services