On 04:34 pm, exarkun@divmod.com wrote:
On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:09:38 -0000, glyph@divmod.com wrote:
On 02:27 am, jml@mumak.net wrote:
Personally, I don't want discussion features for the things for which I have been using specification wiki pages. I can have discussions with people in meatspace or on IRC. I want the *outcome* of a discussion on the page.
I can see the value of that. What I'm referring to is the synergy between, for example, the wikipedia "talk" page and the main entry page. There's value in discussion, and there's value in viewing only the outcome so as not to be confused by the discussion. Trac has a nod to this in that tickets have both a description and a comments section; the problem with this being the aforementioned lack of versioning on the comments section. In other words the fact that we even need to have this discussion is entirely a problem with the tools in question, not a problem with the idea of specifications. Specifications are *great*. I wish we had specifications for everything. Tickets (at least for small things) should ideally always contain or refer to a full specification of what is being done and why.
Chris and I have been using wiki pages for this primarily as a shared work space to hash out ideas. None of the topics we've approached has actually been implemented yet, so I'm not really sure what the next phase of this looks like. However, I would expect that once there is some agreement about a particular specification, whatever necessary tickets will be created and they will live out the normal ticket life cycle. Whether the specification wiki pages live on past the implementation task isn't something I've thought a lot about. Of the top of my head, I don't see any reason for them to, but I also can't think of too many compelling reasons to delete them, either.
I don't have any problem with this, either. Any kind of web-space is appropriate for this kind of forming-ideas planning, and the Twisted wiki particularly so, for Twisted features. Once the specification is relatively fixed (and maybe the process of fixing a specification so that is "officially" agreed upon needs some discussion) then just having a link in the ticket's description to the wikiword of its specification would also be pretty good. The thing I'm concerned about is that once we start having reports of open specifications, statuses for them, owners, assignees, and so on, it's going to be a parallel tracker with separate priorities and workflow. I don't even object to *that* in principle, it might make sense on a project with more resources (more "management overhead" in particular). I just can't see us coping with it now. Sorry if this all seems overly wordy, I just want to make sure it's clear how narrow the scope of my objection is :). I don't want to discourage anyone from planning, specifying, writing down things about Twisted in any format they so choose - but I am concerned about that process creating more work.
To respond to one of jml's points, though, here is a list of the specifications which currently exist:
http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TitleIndex
Just search for "Specification" ;)
And in closing, I don't object to this informal mechanism either :).