[python-committers] My cavalier and aggressive manner, API change and bugs introduced for basically zero benefit

[Antoine Pitrou]

Le 21/01/2017 à 12:27, Nick Coghlan a écrit :
> 
> The Red Hat python-maint folks (Peter Viktorin et al) similarly tried
> to time things so there was a window to provide feedback from Fedora
> Rawhide on a beta release prior to the final 3.6.0 release, but it
> unfortunately ended up not being practical, especially with the lack
> of clarity around when the 3.6 ABI would actually be frozen.
> 
> That uncertainty around the release ABI stability also impacted the
> ability of the manylinux folks to include any of the 3.6 pre-releases
> in their reference build environment.

Normally, our "only bug fixes after the 1st beta" should more or less
guarantee ABI stability, but in practice that policy is very frequently
broken by well-meaning core developers.

Worse, my experience is that trying to remind people of that policy is
frequently met with hostility.  For example, "performance improvements"
are frequently sneaked in after the first beta under the pretext that
they don't harm.  There will be little progress on this front until
there's a serious consensus amongst all active players that the bugfix
period after the first beta should really only allow for *bug fixes*
(i.e. some behaviour which doesn't conform to the documentation and/or
the user's reasonable expectation).

Regards

Antoine.