[stdlib-sig] GHOP / py3k

[Georg Brandl]

C. Titus Brown schrieb:
>>Michael said:
>> Armin said:
>> > That, and a group of
>> >people, dedicated to standard library refactoring.  The majority of
>> >libraries in the standard library are small and easy to understand, I'm
>> >sure they are perfectly suited for students on projects like GSOC or
>> >GHOP to work on.  They could even be used as some sort of "playground"
>> >for new Python developers.
>> 
>> It would be a great project for GHOP *if* we have some experienced 
>> developers, like yourself, dedicated to working out what the things that 
>> need fixing are.
> 
> Testing and doc updates worked reasonably well within GHOP last time,
> and surprisingly little in the way of "experienced developers" were
> needed.  Faced with the responsibility of coming up with dozens of tasks
> on short notice, I picked a dozen stdlib modules and said
> 
>   test this
>   integrate doug hellmann's documentation
>   run through the existing examples and write more
> 
> ...and voila, it happened and attracted positive notice from the BDFL,
> which is saying something.

It also means that it's going to be a bit harder to find new tasks this
year -- not much has changed in terms of the kind of work available.

Most libraries might seem "small and easy to understand" to Armin these
days, but certainly not to high school students from all over the world.
Combine that with the fact that the code quality in the stdlib is supposed
to *improve* due to these efforts, *and* that we need to keep a keen eye
on backwards compatibility, and we have the same non-trivial problem of
finding tasks.  In fact, I'd rather mentor two tasks than find one (good)
additional task :)

> By far the most important part of that process was not my role in
> putting the tasks up, but Georg's role in reviewing the patches and
> committing them in a timely manner.  I can't speak for how much time he
> spent doing that,

Enough for one lifetime!  No, seriously, I'm willing to help as a mentor
in this year's GHOP again, but I don't want to end up as the only core
developer involved.

> however, and I certainly don't expect that level of
> effort from HIM this time; perhaps with Mercurial we can get
> non-committers to act as first-pass filters to reduce the strain on
> Georg or whoever steps into his shoes. [0]

I sincerely hope that it could work that way. Not having to reject sub-
standard work is already a relief.

Georg

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