[Python-Dev] Small RFEs and the Bug Tracker

[Steve Holden]

Facundo Batista wrote:
> 2008/2/23, Virgil Dupras <hsoft at hardcoded.net>:
> 
>>  The flow seems healthy to me.
>>
> 
> What I don't see healthy is that we have, per week, around 30 issues
> more open (30 is the difference between those closed, and the new
> ones).
> 
> So, the curve is always going up... fast.
> 
As Andrew says, the only way to "fix" this, if you think it needs 
fixing, is to recruit new developers and encourage all developers to 
treat outstanding issues as a higher priority than they currently do.

Guido is happy with the current issue count, and relatively few of them 
are serious. Andrew has been organizing regular bug days. If the count 
keeps going up that's as much a measure of the increase in use as it is 
anything else.

I do think it would be a good idea to have a crew continually working to 
address the outstanding issues, but it isn't glamorous work and the fact 
remains that you need a significant understanding of the ecosphere to 
fix things in a sanitary way that's acceptable to committers. It would 
be good to address that issue (shoud we put it in the tracker?), but it 
would take significant efforts in evangelism and training. Most 
developers would rather just write code ...

Enlarging the pool of committers too quickly probably puts quality 
control at risk, something I'd be loath to see happen given Python's 
excellent record in this respect.

A larger team (not necessarily all committers) could help us improve 
quality and reduce the issue count. Deleting issues purely on grounds of 
age is simply throwing away useful information to reduce a numeric 
metric that doesn't really relate directly to quality, and quality 
assurance is the real point of having the tracker.

regards
  Steve
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