[Twisted-Python] Moving tickets forward

exarkun at twistedmatrix.com exarkun at twistedmatrix.com
Sat Oct 29 14:23:27 MDT 2011


On 07:18 pm, itamar at itamarst.org wrote:
>Ticket #3690 was filed as "serial ports do not call connectionLost on
>their protocol", but along the way became a ticket for testing *all* of

I don't think this is quite right.  The blocker was having *any* tests.
>the serial port code. Since the latter is much harder, it got stuck in
>addressing review comments, and the simpler original problem was not
>fixed. In this case, the perfect was the enemy of the good.
>
>To prevent this sort of thing, if you end up enlarging the scope of a
>ticket dramatically, please open a new ticket and divide the work up.
>Splitting up large amounts of work into smaller units is good even if
>the scope of the ticket hasn't changed.
>
>Smaller units of work are easier on everyone, developers and reviewers;
>please look for opportunities to break up tickets into multiple smaller
>tickets if that will help get code merged.

I agree with this.  However, this doesn't mean that untested changes can 
go in (not that I think you're suggesting otherwise).
The serial port case was (and is) challenging because the code had no 
test coverage at all (#3690 adds a small bit of coverage), so no change 
was possible without figuring out a testing strategy.  Even *manual* 
testing is challenging - I had a serial device at one port but I can't 
find the cable anymore.  It would have been nice if someone had thought 
to use the more focused testing approach (that #3690 ended up taking) 
earlier on in the ticket's life.

Jean-Paul




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