[Python-Dev] I would like an svn account

[Brett Cannon]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2009 at 09:52, Georg Brandl <g.brandl at gmx.net> wrote:
> Steve Holden schrieb:
>
>> I think it was courageous of Brett to tackle this issue head-on as he
>> did, and of Victor to respond so positively to the various comments that
>> have been made on this thread. It would be a pity to lose a developer
>> who so obviously has Python's best interests at heart.
>
> Full ACK.
>
>> As someone with a strong interest in Python's development, but whose
>> interests lie outside direct development at the code face I would like
>> to see some way where committed non-committers like Victor could be
>> mentored through the initial stages of development, to the point where
>> they can be trusted to make commits that don't need reversion.
>
> I don't think we have the manpower to do that beyond the already
> established "I have to sign off all your commits" procedure.  Of course,
> this is time consuming, so maybe for Victor it is just the matter of
> no developer currently finding the time to do it.
>

This is why I am trying to document the development procedures. That
way at least the initial steps for handling various details are
obvious and thus won't take up someone's time in explaining them.

And to help make sure this thread stays on course, it very well might
be the case that no one has the time to be Victor's mentor at this
moment. I know I don't have the time right now.

>> In the old days this would have happened by a process known in the
>> British training world as "sitting with Nellie" - doing the work next
>> to, and directly supervised by, someone who had been doing it a long
>> time and who knew all the wrinkles of the job. Quite how to achieve a
>> similar effect in today's distributed development environment is less
>> obvious.
>
> IRC gets relatively close to sitting next to someone :)
>
>> Could we talk about this at PyCon (as well as continuing this thread to
>> some sort of conclusion)? While the sprints are great for those who are
>> already involved some activity specifically targeted at new developers
>> would be a welcome addition, and might even help recruit them.
>
> Topic for the language summit?

Maybe. We will see how that whole thing goes. I suspect it will be
rather organic so it will depend on how much time there is.

And the sprints at PyCon have actually acted as a mentoring session
for a lot of people. People end up helping out with a new feature and
the committers there are able to do a review instantly. And with the
tight feedback loop between committer and contributor along with
working on a new feature instead of existing code leads to people
getting commit privileges on the spot (if someone is there to give
them the privileges; I honestly don't know who has the abilities to
give the rights anymore beyond Barry, Martin, and Neal).

-Brett