[Python-Dev] Encouraging developers

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Giovanni Bajo writes:

 > On 05/03/2007 19.46, A.M. Kuchling wrote:
 > 
 > > At PyCon, there was general agreement that exposing a read-only
 > > Bazaar/Mercurial/git/whatever version of the repository wouldn't be
 > > too much effort, and might make things easier for external people
 > > developing patches.  

 > I really believe this is just a red herring, pushed by some SCM
 > wonk. The problem with patch submission has absolutely *nothing* to
 > do with tools.

Of course it does.  How important is a matter for individual judgment,
of course.

The *frustration level* with the acceptance process is certainly
related to the annoyance of locally maintaining a patch in the face of
a flow of upstream changes.  The distributed SCMs make this *much*
easier, and therefore can reduce the frustration level, at *zero*
expense to the core developers (anybody with read access can maintain
such a read-only repo).  This is a good thing.

It *is* important that the core sanction and support "official" mirror
repos.

This may or may not help the acceptance process to improve; I believe
you are correct, that it will have little direct impact on the
acceptance process.  Nevertheless, life for third-party developers
will become somewhat more pleasant, especially as they have a much
easier way to exchange and refine patches.

This last can feed back into the "review for review" bargain.