On Wed, Oct 4, 2017 at 6:58 PM, Victor Stinner <victor.stinner@gmail.com> wrote:
2017-09-22 18:48 GMT+02:00 Antoine Pitrou <antoine@python.org>:
- Long term commitement. (...)
Unfortunately we can't evaluate that in advance. Even the person being promoted often does not known whether they'll still be there in 5 or 10 years. Hopefully that's on their horizon, but many factors can interfere.
To be clear, I disagree with the "long term commitement", but I tried to summarize what I heard from other core developers. I think that it would be wrong to at least not mention it. If most core developers disagree with this requirement, we should remove it. If there is no consensus, I prefer to mention it *but* also explains that it's not strictly a "requirement", but more a "whish".
I think it really depends on the reason the developer has been given commit privileges:
- generic work on the documentation, tests, or stdlib? several people can take over if the dev disappears
- changed something specific in the language (e.g. import system, Unicode representation)? some people can take over
- added new features to the language (e.g. typing, asyncio) or a new module? few people can take over
IOW, the lower the bus factor, the higher are the expectations of long term commitment.
In my case I used to do lot of generic work on CPython and when I became less active other people took over with not many repercussions. For more specific areas (e.g. html.parser or Unicode) I still try to participate to the discussions. For the bug tracker I have to commit long-term because other devs lack the time and/or knowledge required to maintain it.
Best Regards, Ezio Melotti
I will try to clarify expectations in term of time, evenings, weekends and holidays :-)
I, personally, can only think of a couple of cases where a person being promoted core developer vanished a few months after that. It's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, though it *is* frustrating to spend your time mentoring and promoting someone (which also engages your own responsability, since you're the one vouching that they'll be up to the task) only to see that person produce little to no work as a core developer.
While it's sad, I don't think that we can prevent this. It's hard to "force" someone to work for free on a free software during nights and weekends.
- Review patches and pull requests. While we don't require not expect newcomers to review, we expect that core developers dedicate a part of their time on reviews.
Yes, I believe this is the most important part of being a core developer. What it means is that core developers care about the quality of the whole code base (and also the non-code parts), not only their own contributions to it.
I completed my list. I'm lazy, I copied/pasted what you wrote (not only this paragraph) :-)
https://cpython-core-tutorial.readthedocs.io/en/latest/what_ is_a_cpython_core_developer.html
- Know the CPython workflow. Be aware of the pre-commit and post-commits CIs. How ideas are discussed. It's not only about writing and pushing patches.
This part is also required from regular contributors, at least the experienced ones.
Ah yes, I didn't say that these requirements are specific to CPython core developers. Most items are "expected" from regular contributors. I wrote it explicitly before my list :-)
Two things I would add:
- Know to be nice (...)
- Show a bit of humility (...)
Oh, you're right. Thank you for being explicit on these points.
I think that we already expected this from promoted core developers, just that it wasn't written down previously.
Victor
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