[Numpy-discussion] The process I intend to follow for any proposed changes to NumPy

Ondřej Čertík ondrej.certik at gmail.com
Mon Sep 14 19:59:39 EDT 2015


Hi Travis,

On Sun, Sep 13, 2015 at 4:51 PM, Travis Oliphant <travis at continuum.io> wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I just wanted to clarify, that I am very excited about a few ideas I have
> --- but I don't have time myself to engage in the community process to get
> these changes into NumPy.     However, those are real processes --- I've
> been coaching a few people in those processes for the past several years
> already.
>
> So, rather than do nothing, what I'm looking to do is to work with a few
> people who I can share my ideas with, get excited about the ideas, and then
> who will work with the community to get them implemented.   That's what I
> was announcing and talking about yesterday --- looking for interested people
> who want to work on NumPy *with* the NumPy community.
>
> In my enthusiasm, I realize that some may have mis-understood my intention.
> There is no 'imminent' fork, nor am I planning on doing some crazy amount of
> work that I then try to force on other developers of NumPy.
>
> What I'm planning to do is find people to train on NumPy code base (people
> to increase the diversity of the developers would be ideal -- but hard to
> accomplish).  I plan to train them on NumPy based on my experience, and on
> what I think should be done --- and then have *them* work through the
> community process and engage with others to get consensus (hopefully not
> losing too much in translation in the process --- but instead getting even
> better).
>
> During that process I will engage as a member of the community and help
> write NEPs and other documents and help clarify where it makes sense as I
> can.   I will be filtering for people that actually want to see NumPy get
> better.    Until I identify the people and work with them, it will be hard
> to tell how this will best work.   So, stay tuned.
>
> If all goes well, what you should see in a few weeks time are specific
> proposals, a branch or two, and the beginnings of some pull requests.    If
> you don't see that, then I will not have found the right people to help me,
> and we will all continue to go back to searching.
>
> While I'm expecting the best, in the worst case, we get additional people
> who know the NumPy code base and can help squash bugs as well as implement
> changes that are desired.    Three things are needed if you want to
> participate in this:  1) A willingness to work with the open source
> community, 2) a deep knowledge of C and in-particular CPython's brand of C,
> and 3) a willingness to engage with me, do a mind-meld and dump around the
> NumPy code base, and then improve on what is in my head with the rest of the
> community.


I don't have time to do the work myself, but I'll be happy to help in
terms of the community. Travis has paid me in the past to do the NumPy
1.7 release, and implement/fix some things that Travis had in mind. I
had no prior involvement with the NumPy codebase / community, and
within few months I had to get myself familiar with the code, fix
release critical bugs, get my PRs accepted by the community,
eventually get push access (from the core developers, not from Travis)
so that I can merge other people's patches, and most importantly, make
the community allow me to actually do the release, even though I came
from outside. As far as I know, Travis didn't have to pull any strings
for me, and as far as I know, there was no friction in the community
either --- there was a job to be done, we got it done, and that was
it.

So I'll be happy to share my experience and help the person (if coming
from outside) how to do this. In this case a push access is not
necessary, so it's just about sending high quality PRs and good
communication.

Ondrej



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