[python-committers] A different way to focus discussions

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:

> [I think my other response got dropped, so apologies for any duplicates]
>
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > I wonder if it would make sense to require that for each PEP a new GitHub
> > *repo* be created whose contents would just be a draft PEP and whose
> issue
> > tracker and PR manager would be used to debate the PEP and propose
> specific
> > changes.
>
> I don't think I'd want to see tons of new PEP repos under the current
> `python` organization.  Maybe we should create a new organization for this
> experiment?
>

Hm, what's the cost of those extra repos? As long as they have consistent
names (e.g. pep-1234) they're easy to ignore right? Or does GitHub have a
quota of repos per org?


> Also, since non-core devs can and do create PEPs, the permission
> management will be different than the normal repos.  Clearly the PEP
> authors should be owners of the individual repos, but they should probably
> also decide how merges happen, and who else can contribute to their repo.
>
> It also means that PEP editors probably have an additional responsibility
> to create the PEP repo.
>

I was thinking of a workflow where the pep author initially creates the
repo under their own username and directs discussion there. Then when their
PEP is accepted (or rejected!) they can donate their repo to the python
org. I know such a thing is possible (we did it for the mypy and typeshed
repos).


> PEP 1's Discussions-To header can probably be co-opted for the URL to the
> GH repo.  Right now, that field is described as an email address, but it
> would be appropriate IMHO to also allow a URL for discussions.
>

Sure.

> Thoughts? (We can dogfood this proposal too, if there's interest. :-)
>
> I don't know whether this will help focus rambling PEP discussions.  I
> personally don't love the linearity of GH comments.  Threading is useful!
>

Ironically for me GitHub is less linear than email. It's easier to ask
people to open a new issue than it is to ask them to start a new thread. So
e.g. if a discussion starts about a survey of feature X in various
languages, when it veers off into a tutorial for a specific language that
could be a separate issue, and the meta-discussion on how the list of
languages should be selected could be made another issue.


> OTOH, it seems like a low-cost experiment to try so if there's a volunteer
> who wants to be the guinea pig, I'm fine with it.
>

I think Mark Shannon volunteered PEP 576 (though so far he hasn't created a
separate repo, he's just created a PR for the peps repo IIUC). I hope Nick
will also volunteer PEP 577 for this.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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