[Python-Dev] tracker/irc and development transparency (was: cpython: Rename contextlib.ignored ...)

[R. David Murray]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2013 20:20:28 -0400, Barry Warsaw <barry at python.org> wrote:
> On Oct 12, 2013, at 09:06 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
> 
> >I'm not too fussy about the name (clearly). We originally picked ignored(),
> >Raymond asked if he could change it to ignore() (and I said yes),
> 
> Just as a point of order, it would be good to capture such side-channel
> discussions in the relevant issue.  Mysterious decisions like this are easy to
> miss in the deluge of checkin messages, and don't help promote a transparent
> development process.

+10.  Those of us who regularly hang out and discuss things on irc[*]
try to be good about updating the issue with "xxx was discussed on IRC
and...".  This is critical, because even the sometimes lengthly checkin
messages I write carry nowhere near as much information as can be found by
visiting the issue number mentioned in the checkin header.  (I note that
the issue number was also missing from this particular commit message.)

As the community referring to this stuff grows (and it has to, given
that use of the language is still growing) and the history of the
project becomes ever deeper, this kind of documentation becomes more
and more important.

--David

[*] We will often be carrying on a sort of dual conversation:  quick
sentences on IRC interleaved with longer back-and-forth posts on the
tracker, both part of the same ongoing conversation...