[Python-Dev] Community buildbots (was Re: User's complaints)

[A.M. Kuchling]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2006 at 02:03:22PM -0400, glyph at divmod.com wrote:
> I would like to propose, although I certainly don't have time to implement,
> a program by which Python-using projects could contribute buildslaves which
> would run their projects' tests with the latest Python trunk.

An excellent idea!

> It's a constant source of anxiety to me
> that I might miss some key feature addition to Python which breaks
> or distorts some key bit of Twisted functionality (as the new-style
> exceptions, or recent ImportWarning almost did) because I don't have
> enough time to follow all the threads here.

So don't read threads -- just try the alphas and betas!  The "What's
New" documents have a 'porting' section that flags changes that may
require application changes, but items are added only if I think of
them or if someone suggests them (e.g. generator.gi_frame can be None
in Python 2.5 -- I would never have thought people would have code
that broke because of this).

> While the new python.org is very nice, I do note that there's no "blogs" 
> entry
> on the front page, something which has become a fixture on almost every 
> other website I visit regularly.  

A 'Blogs' link could be trivially added by linking to
planet.python.org, though the blogs collected there are not in any way
'the Python developers', but a jumble of developers and users.  I
don't think enough core developers have weblogs (or write about
Python) to make a 'python-dev only' planet very useful.

> mainly a listing of releases and events.  There's no forum for getting the 
> community _excited_ about new features (especially new features which are 
> explicitly enabled by potential breakages), and selling them on the cool 
> uses.  

I think the venue for this would be weblog entries or news sites such
as oreillynet.com.  I do worry that we don't have enough people
writing articles and things, but have no idea how to encourage people
to write more.

--amk