[Python-Dev] Our failure at handling GSoC students

[martin at v.loewis.de]

Zitat von Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net>:

>
> One cruel example is the set of PEP 3121 / PEP 384 refactorings done by
> Robin Schreiber:

I personally dont consider it failed, yet. I still plan to integrate
them, hopefully for 3.4.

> Robin has produced many patches that seem to reach the stated goal
> (refactor C extension modules to take advantage of the latest PEPs
> about module initialization and extension types definition).
> Unfortunately, tackling both goals at the same time produces big
> patches with a lot of churn; and it is also not obvious the PEP 384
> refactoring is useful for the stdlib (while the PEP 3121 refactoring
> definitely is).

Choice of supporting PEP 384 was deliberate. It will change all
types into heap types, which is useful for multiple-interpreter
support and GC.

>
> What didn't produce an alarm during Robin's work is that GSoC work is
> done in private.

It wasn't really done in private. Robin posted to python-dev, anybody
who would have been interested could have joined discussions.

> It is also
> likely that the mentor gets overworked after the GSoC period is over,
> is unable to finalize the patch and push it, and other core devs have a
> hard time catching up on the work and don't know what the shortcomings
> are.

It's indeed unfortunate that RL interfered with my Python contributions.
I apologize for that.

However, anybody who wanted to catch up could have
contacted Robin or myself. As overworked as we all are,
nobody did.

Regards,
Martin