[Python-Dev] What to do with languishing patches?

[Mark Lawrence]

On 18/07/2010 18:46, Alexander Belopolsky wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 7:45 PM, Mark Lawrence<breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk>  wrote:
>> On 17/07/2010 22:57, Terry Reedy wrote:
> ..
>>> I am certainly reluctant to recruit others to help, as I did for #9222,
>>> if there will be no action indefinitely.
>>>
>>
>> This is standard Python behavour.  The worst case I've come across is a
>> patch that dated back to 2001 that had not been dealt with.  But I'm
>> staggered as to how a third party supplies a patch for (say) 2.3, it doesn't
>> get applied, then the issue tracker simply keeps updating the version
>> targeted until we're now at 3.2.  That of course doesn't mean that anything
>> will get done, better wait until py4.7?
>>
>
> If this is the reputation that Python gets as a project, I think it is
> alarming.   I was going to dismiss Mark's comment as over dramatizing
> the situation, but unfortunately it is not.
>
> Let me focus on a specific example not because it is important, but
> because it illustrates many different problems in an easy to
> understand case.   The issue is http://bugs.python.org/issue1699259,
> which is a very simple patch submitted back in 2007.   I came across
> that patch a year an a half later and posted a review.  OP responded
> the next day and posted an updated patch.  I gave the resulting patch
> a positive review, but the timing was unfortunate because it was
> during RC phase for 3.0.
>
> At the time, I made a prediction that 'deferring [the patch] to 2.7
> and 3.1 [was] virtually equivalent to closing with "won't fix"'.
> That was quite right:  the next comment came a year later with "Moving
> the 3.1 target to 3.2, since 3.1 is out" only to be forgotten for
> another year to be rediscovered in Mark's recent crusade.
>
> As I said, the issue is not an important one, but I noticed that OP
> did not submit any other patch or commented on any other issue since
> then.  It is impossible to tell if he was turned off by the lack of
> attention to his patch, but I think it is likely that Python is
> loosing contributors when they submit a patch, respond to reviews and
> see their patch languish for no specified reason.
>
> I think there is at least one improvement that we can make.   We can
> set up a mechanism that will assure that acceptable patches that don't
> get applied because they come at the wrong time in development cycle,
> get applied early in the development of the next release.
>
> We already have "posponed" and "remind" resolutions, but these are
> exclusive of "accepted".   I think there should be a clear way to mark
> the issue "accepted and would be applied if X.Y was out already."
> Chances are one of the resolution labels already has such meaning, but
> in this case it should be more prominently documented as such.

Alexander,

This strikes me as being simple, straight forward common sense, well 
put.  Until such time as this happens, I'll carry on ploughing through 
the outstanding issues flagging up things to try and get them moved. 
Apologies to all and sundry if I tread on toes.

Maybe going off on a tangent, but I find it frustrating because you 
(plural) can't find a given module on the issue tracker.  Say I'm 
looking for issues relating to smtplib, all I can do is look in the 
title of the issue.  Have I missed something, or is there a need to have 
subsections so that if Lib is selected, you can then find the 
appropriate module?

Kindest regards.

Mark Lawrence.