[Python-Dev] contributors survey?

[Paul Moore]

On 2 March 2011 12:07, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:
> But I wonder if there are other social or technical factors, such as
> the community being too intimidating or not welcoming enough.
>
> Actually, if some python-dev readers have something to say about that,
> they are welcome :)

>From a personal POV, it's the long time it takes for a change to get
applied that really discourages me. I know all the reasons why it
happens, and I fully appreciate that it's a chicken and egg situation,
but nevertheless it's a huge discouragement.

As an example (and I'm not picking on anyone here!) my buildbot has
been ineffective for some time because it was continually failing on
test_ttk_guionly, which simply isn't valid in my setup (buildbot
running as a service, so no GUI to test). There was a patch around for
quite some time, which I wasn't qualified to judge in detail but which
looked OK to me. Recently, Antoine applied it (thanks, Antione!) and
it has fixed that issue. Of course, now, my buildbot is failing again,
this time with "no space on device" errors. I suspect that again it's
an environmental issue, but I'm not really motivated to try to
diagnose it given (a) the likely time it'll take to get any fix
applied and (b) it's presumably not a general issue as otherwise I'd
see other buildbots failing with the same error. (Personal commitments
also mean I have little time to spend on this, which doesn't help...)
So I will probably leave it.

Sadly, I have no solution to offer, and TBH, this is probably not news
to anyone on this list, but I really do believe that this is the main
blocker to getting additional contributors involved.

Paul.

PS My one experience of participating in a bug day was that it was a
very encouraging experience of being involved in contribution. So more
bug days and/or sprints would definitely be good from this perspective
:-)