[IPython-dev] Proposal: soft moratorium on re-architecting for 5.0

Fernando Perez fperez.net at gmail.com
Fri Jun 26 20:57:14 EDT 2015


On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 5:38 PM, Chris Colbert <sccolbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have to side firmly with Fernando on this one. After ripping apart the
> notebook code base over the last few days, it's become clear that things
> need change measurably if we are going to move forward with a platform that
> is both maintainable and customizable.  There is quite a bit of technical
> debt in there, and that bill is coming due. My team and cohorts are ready,
> willing, and able to tackle this problem (as Fernando mentioned, we've
> already started), and I think it would be a strategic mistake to shut the
> door on the momentum we've been building over the last several months.
>

What's going to be very challenging in this effort is the *coordination*
part.  We need to make sure that we have both a chance for proper
discussion of the key ideas, and for open coordination of the effort while
it's happening, so that:

a) whoever ends up working on the critical path can focus on that and just
get the nasty business done

b) the rest of the team can feel comfortable that there's still other areas
where work can proceed cleanly and without interference or blockage.

In the past we've been reasonably good at these kinds of things, but the
project is getting bigger, more complicated, and we have more people too.
So the challenge this time is going to be significantly harder.  Let's put
in the necessary effort also into communicating how to do this right, so we
come out ahead with a cleaner codebase we're all happier working on in
short order...

It would be great if during scipy, you folks try to draft an outline of
what the key pieces of that refactoring would entail, identifying what
areas of the project would effectively hold locks. That would let us more
easily define what is NOT locked, so we can then partition things for
everyone else to work on.

Let's have that publicly documented (probably as an IPEP) so that we don't
break the team in the process...

Cheers

f
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/ipython-dev/attachments/20150626/3714dc0b/attachment.html>


More information about the IPython-dev mailing list