[Python-Dev] My patches

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 7:46 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> What about having two level of devs ?
>>
>> + core developers + standard library developers
>>
>> [cut]
>
>
> So I'd suggest thinking about developer responsibilities more in terms
> of areas of expertise rather than "levels" of developers. Those of us
> that happen to understand the guts of the compiler or the VM aren't more
> competent globally or more trusted than those maintaining the various
> modules in the standard library - just interested in different things.

Right,

I would like to share my experience about this, if it can be helpful.

I have focused so far in distutils, which, I believe
was not in the top priority of core developers during the last year.
(If this is not true
please forgive me).

Anyway, so I am starting to become quite specialized in this part of
Python, and
I pushed patches for it in the tracker.

The patches I wrote that made it so far took between 4 to 8 months to
be applied.

I have really simple patches for distutils that are just adding tests,
that are waiting for
review. I guess these patches will be reviewed in a few months, I am
failry confident
about that. I know core developers are drowned into more important topics.
And this area of Python is being highly discussed to be refactored, maybe
outside the stdlib at some point, but there are a *lot* of simple
things to do today in there.

So basically, if I want to be efficient in distutils I need to become
a core developer,
and this means (Guido said) I need to start providing patches for the
rest of the Python
code and eventually (after a few years I guess) maybe become a core developer.

Then I'll be able to work in distutils because at that point in the
future I'll be trusted.

I can't do that ! I don't have the time to become a Python core code expert.
But in my everyday work I became a packaging / deploying specialist.

So my point is : if I am "trusted" at some point in the work I am doing in
distutils, will I have a commit access there ?

If so, I 'll continue to focus on this package and to commit patches for it,
to try to gain that trust for sure. Otherwise I will need to work in a
third-party library
to be efficient, and stop working on patches for distutils.  And this
is, ihmo a bad thing
because this sdtlib package need some love.

Cheers
Tarek