[Twisted-Python] Re: [Twisted-commits] r20094 - Add a spewing decorator which stores all of the function and method calls

[Andrew Bennetts]

Jean-Paul Calderone wrote:
[...]
> 
> In case that's a little too muddled and fuzzy to make sense, here's another
> angle.  A ticket serves as a point where the relevance, utility, 
> correctness,
> whatever, of a change can be discussed.  If someone is interested in some
> development which is taking place, they should be able to find that point
> easily and without interactive assistance from anyone.  If not, their input
> may be lost or delayed until it is useless or integrating it costs more than
> the ultimate payoff.

Some quick observations:

  * the reasons for using tickets you give here (a place to discuss a change, a
    central place to look for development in progress, facilitating early
    discussion of a change) are not given on the official UQDS page
    (http://www.divmod.org/trac/wiki/UltimateQualityDevelopmentSystem).
  * the official UQDS page gives reasons for using tickets that are irrelevant
    to volunteer contributions: "a way to manage distractions and continuously
    re-focus on what's really important."  Open source volunteers are scratching
    itches.  Whatever they are working on *is* what's important.  Other things
    may be important to other people, and they are certainly welcome to file
    tickets asking for things to be done, but that's outside of stated role of
    UQDS: that's just ordinary bug (and feature request) tracking.

I think it is useful to have a place to discuss a branch *once it is ready for
public consumption*.  A developer should *not* be discouraged from using version
control tools just because they haven't decided exactly what direction they are
going in yet, or even if their experiment is worthwhile.

I think that developers *should* be encouraged to share their in development
work early and often, because as you say input from others is often helpful.
But forcing them to jump through the hoops of filing tickets (thus requiring
them to have a clear statement exactly what they are working when they might not
know yet) seems like a bad idea.  Have you never started hacking on something
without a clear idea of if this was something worthwhile or not, or even exactly
what it might be good for?  This is a useful and legimitate form of development.
Or are you saying that a ticket titled "Do stuff!" is fine? :)

A final thought... we *do* have a place to discuss branches without tickets, as
you have demonstrated: this mailing list :)

-Andrew.