On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 8:22 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:

On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 7:06 AM, Marten van Kerkwijk
<m.h.vankerkwijk@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Nathaniel,
>
> Overall, hugely in favour!  For detailed comments, it would be good to
> have a link to a PR; could you put that up?

Well, there's a PR here: https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/10706

But, this raises a question :-). (One which also came up here:
https://github.com/numpy/numpy/pull/10704#issuecomment-371684170)

There are sensible two workflows we could use (or at least, two that I
can think of):

1. We merge updates to the NEPs as we go, so that whatever's in the
repo is the current draft. Anyone can go to the NEP webpage at
http://numpy.org/neps (WIP, see #10702) to see the latest version of
all NEPs, whether accepted, rejected, or in progress. Discussion
happens on the mailing list, and line-by-line feedback can be done by
quote-replying and commenting on individual lines. From time to time,
the NEP author takes all the accumulated feedback, updates the
document, and makes a new post to the list to let people know about
the updated version.

This is how python-dev handles PEPs.

2. We use Github itself to manage the review. The repo only contains
"accepted" NEPs; draft NEPs are represented by open PRs, and rejected
NEPs are represented by PRs that were closed-without-merging.
Discussion uses Github's commenting/review tools, and happens in the
PR itself.

This is roughly how Rust handles their RFC process, for example:
https://github.com/rust-lang/rfcs

Trying to do some hybrid version of these seems like it would be
pretty painful, so we should pick one.

Given that historically we've tried to use the mailing list for
substantive features/planning discussions, and that our NEP process
has been much closer to workflow 1 than workflow 2 (e.g., there are
already a bunch of old NEPs already in the repo that are effectively
rejected/withdrawn), I think we should maybe continue that way, and
keep discussions here?

So my suggestion is discussion should happen on the list, and NEP
updates should be merged promptly, or just self-merged. Sound good?

Agreed that overall (1) is better than (2), rejected NEPs should be visible. However there's no need for super-quick self-merge, and I think it would be counter-productive.

Instead, just send a PR, leave it open for some discussion, and update for detailed comments (as well as long in-depth discussions that only a couple of people care about) in the Github UI and major ones on the list. Once it's stabilized a bit, then merge with status "Draft" and update once in a while. I think this is also much more in like with what python-dev does, I have seen substantial discussion on Github and have not seen quick self-merges.