[Python-Dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Nick Coghlan]

On Mon, Jul 12, 2010 at 6:30 AM, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com> wrote:
> So, this is indeed an area where improvement is theoretically possible,
> but I'm not sure how we get from here to there.  As you say, one option is
> for the PSF to fund people to do it somehow.  (I'd be happy to be one of
> those people for some number of hours a week, by the way, but I doubt that
> the PSF budget is going to stretch to that kind of ongoing commitment.)

One problem that can arise is that when the active maintainer for a
particular area gets caught up in other things (e.g. KBK for Idle in
this particular case - added directly to cc list), then the commit
rate for that area drastically slows down. Other committers have
become accustomed to deferring to the judgement of the active
maintainer, so if that judgement isn't forthcoming, then things don't
go in.

As a community of volunteers, obviously the amount of time we can
devote to Python varies based on other commitments. Perhaps we need to
encourage active maintainers to be more proactive about identifying
folks that regularly submit good patches that may be candidates for
commit access in that area. Otherwise, when an active maintainer's
time is taken up by other things there's an understandable reluctance
to tread on an active maintainer's toes by bypassing them and giving
the task to someone else. Not only that, but the current maintainer is
usually in the best position to judge the quality of submitted
patches, as they're the most familiar with the code in question.

While there are many areas of the standard library that don't even
have *one* designated maintainer at this point in time, our goal
should probably be to try to reach the point of having at least two
maintainers for each area so that one person getting busy doesn't halt
progress.

Regards,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia