[Python-Dev] My patches

[Paul Moore]

2008/10/30 "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de>:
>> Question - is there anything Roundup can do to help triage? Extra
>> status or keyword values ("has patch",
>
> There is "patch" keyword already, and a public query "Patches"
> (as well as "My Patches")

Sorry, I checked the keywords but missed it.

>> "ready to go", ...)?
>
> We could give more people the right to set the resolution to "Accepted".
> This is a matter of trust, though - if the committer then still needs
> to review it, anyway, nothing is gained.

Agreed. I was thinking vaguely in terms of a type of voting - rather
than a status or resolution, it might be more like the nosy list - a
list of people who have said they think the patch is OK. The more
people on the list, the stronger the assurance that it's acceptable.
It is still a matter of trust, of course - nothing can avoid that.

>> More
>> canned searches ("Show Open" and "Show Unassigned" aren't a lot of
>> help)?
>
> Please go to the "edit" label next to "Search". You can store your
> own searches, but you can also share searches with others.

I see it now. Thanks. It's not very obvious, but once you know it's
there, it looks fine.

>> Custom reports (summaries by type)?
>
> This I don't understand - how is it different from a search?

I was thinking in terms of summary reports - counts of numbers of
issues in various groups. The output layout is different from a
search. My idea was to make it easier to find areas which are worth
tackling (for example, if there are lots of documentation patches, it
might be worth a look through to see if any are trivial). It's graphs
and counts to help people to find areas they can help with that I was
thinking of.

It's not a very clear concept, even in my own mind though.

>> Or are such things there and simply not publicised enough?
>
> Perhaps. I really don't know what percentage of interested users
> is aware of roundup capabilities.

Fair point. My gut feeling is that more people would be interested if
we had ways of presenting the list of issues in better ways than the
current monolithic list. If people could see "hey, there's a lot of
documentation (or library, or C code, or whatever) patches which
haven't been looked at yet", they might be inclined to take a look.

Maybe even a simple graph of current issues on the python.org front
page, with a "Lend a hand!" type of heading, to suggest that people
could help.

There's still the trust issue you mentioned above, but my instinct is
that the average Python coder simply doesn't realise that they could
help - or they believe that taking a spare 15 minutes "wouldn't be
worth it".

>> 2. Some patches marked as "documentation" are doc fixes, others seem
>> to be issues where it has been decided that the behaviour is correct
>> as is, but needs to be documented. Fair enough, but it's much harder
>> to assess the latter, and there's no way of just grabbing the former
>> (for example, to spend a spare 30 minutes reviewing simple stuff).
>
> There is the "easy" keyword. Of course, it might also be useful to
> triage more issues as "easy".

That might help. But you can't search on combinations of keyword (e.g.
easy, with a patch). Maybe an extra property "Difficulty", with values
Easy, Moderate, Complex (and blank, for "not checked yet") would be
good. Interested parties could check for issues with blank difficulty,
and assign a difficulty level. That's useful triage, and not that hard
for anyone to do.

>> 3. There's nothing obvious I can do to move an issue forward. Sure, I
>> can make a comment, but that's about it. I'd like something that stood
>> a bit more chance of getting noticed (like a status change, or maybe a
>> list of people who think this is good to apply, which I can add myself
>> to).
>
> The "developer" role has more user interface. I've just given it to you.

Thanks. I'll try to justify it by doing a bit more on the tracker :-)

>> Hmm, I've spent more time on this than I should have, and it's gone
>> way off topic. Is there anywhere better to discuss it?
>
> There is the tracker-discuss list for discussion, and the meta tracker
> for actual problems/wishes for the tracker.

Thanks.
Paul.