[Python-Dev] Removing IDLE from the standard library

[Glyph Lefkowitz]

On Jul 11, 2010, at 3:19 PM, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

> Unfortunately, it's often not clear what the submitter wants: does she
> want to help, or want to get help? For a bug report, I often post a
> message "can you provide a patch?", but sometimes, it isn't that clear.

Perhaps this is the one area where the biggest advance could be made: a clarification of the workflow.

My experience with Python issues which have been "triaged" is that everyone who triages tickets has a slightly different idea of who is responsible for the ticket and what they're supposed to do next at every point in the process.  Triage, as described on <http://www.python.org/dev/workflow/>, emphasizes making sure "that all fields in the issue tracker are properly set", rather than on communicating with the contributor or reporter.

On Twisted, we try to encourage triagers to focus on communicating the workflow ramifications of what a particular contributor has done.  We try to provide a response to the bug reporter or patch submitter that says "thanks, but in order to move this along, you need to go through the following steps" and sometimes even attach a link to the workflow document pointing out exactly where in the process the ticket is now stuck.  (At least, that's what we're trying to do.)

This involves a lot of repeating ourselves in ticket comments, but it's well worth it (and as more of the repetition moves into citing links to documents that have been written to describe aspects of the workflow, it's less onerous).

<http://www.python.org/dev/workflow/> describes what the steps are, but it's in a sort of procedural passive voice that doesn't say who is responsible for doing reviews or how to get a list of patches which need to be reviewed or what exactly a third-party non-core-committer reviewer should do to remove the 'Patch review' keyword.

<http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/TwistedDevelopment#SubmittingaPatch> and <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/ReviewProcess> meander around a bit, but a while ago we re-worked them so that each section has a specific audience (authors, reviewers, or external patch submitters) and that helped readers understand what they're intended to do.

Plus, <http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/report/15> is a useful resource for core developers with only a little bit of free time to do a review.

(I'm just offering some suggestions based on what I think has worked, not to hold Twisted up as a paragon of a perfect streamlined process.  We still have folks complain about stuck patches, these documents are _far_ from perfect, and there are still some varying opinions about how certain workflow problems should be dealt with and differences in quality of review.  Plus, we have far fewer patches to deal with than Python.  Nevertheless, the situation used to be worse for us, and these measures seem to have helped.)
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