[python-committers] number of active core devs

[Victor Stinner]

2018-06-03 10:27 GMT+02:00 Antoine Pitrou <antoine at python.org>:
> That said, it is true that core development activity continues to
> shrink, at least according to this particular metric:
> https://github.com/python/cpython/graphs/contributors

I also noticed a very significant drop in the number of commits in the
master branch. I prefer OpenHub, since it's possible to zoom on the
last 5 years, and the mouse gives the number of commits per month:
https://www.openhub.net/p/python/commits/summary

A raw estimation is that the average was 400 commits per month 2 years
ago, and in 2017 it was closer to 200 commits per month: 2x less
commits in the master branch.

I recall that before GitHub, it was very common that I pushed directly
a change to fix a typo, to change a timeout value, or even more
frequently... to fix my previous commit. Before GitHub, we had
basically no pre-commit tests, so it's very common to break the
buildbots. It was also more common to push a feature into multiple
single commits. Sometimes to get commits easier to read, easier to
review, and to get "atomic changes".

With GitHub, there is a very high pressure on preventing any
regression on Linux and Windows, since we have Travis CI (Linux) and
AppVeyor (Windows) CIs. I also guess (but I'm not sure) that there is
more pressure on the review. IMHO core developers and contributors
spend more time on review than previously.

In short, the feature commit + fix the commit became a single commit :-)

Well, that's my optimistic guess :-)

Since there is more pressure on the review , all changes are more
visible thanks to pull requests, I push less quick fixes, and try to
spend more time on large changes.

Victor