On Sat, Mar 03, 2012 at 03:58:42AM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> [ Replying to this now, because it appears some people seem to think
> mails that go unanswered are considered as accepted facts... ]
So be it.
> > work is also considered ready enough by other dpkg co-maintainers, by
> > the Release Team, and by various porters, which have all asked multiple
> > times to have that work in the Debian archive.
>
> Claims by people who during all this time, when this has supposedly been
> considered such a priority and so important to the point of bringing
> it to a confrontational body like the tech-ctte, have been either
> unable or unwilling to review that code and find the problems it had.
> I still have to see a single code review on the list...
The accusation part of this is not for me to be picked up.
But that's not the point. The point is whether you did get to decide
that thorough code review had to be completed before uploading, even
only to experimental. Code review is *a* way to achieve code quality, it
is not the *only* way. User testing is another one.
> You keep mentioning this ralatively new “Debian is a do-ocracy” (which
> I think it's been promoted mostly by you?) when it seems to me the
> commonly held motto has always been “Debian is a meritocracy”. In any
> case, more often than not whenever I've seen that being used, it seems
> like an excuse to justify unsound technical decisions, or poor work.
I've used the term a lot, yes. But I don't think I've invented it in the
first place. Anyhow the difference among the two is crucial here. The
way I see it --- and you're free to disregard of course, we're entirely
in the realm of opinions here --- is that in a meritocracy you get to
"command" on the basis of past, acquired rights. In a do-ocracy you
need to keep on maintaining those rights by showing you're doing
something. Blocking others is not enough to maintain the right to
"command".
> > [...] (And TBH the thought of you hurrying up now in doing such a
> > work is worrisome in its own right.)
>
> So, you mean that doing code review and cleanup is worse than not doing
> any at all... ok.
Uh? Non sequitur. My quoted text above meant that the idea one is doing
code review in a hurry is not as reassuring as the idea of one doing
code review more calmly.
> If rushing things out and being sloppy or merging technically unsound
> code is being a team player, then count me out.
I think Debian has now decided, using the most appropriate means, that
uploading to experimental at this stage wasn't really "rushing things
out". So let's agree to disagree.
On Sat, Mar 03, 2012 at 04:05:44AM +0100, Guillem Jover wrote:
> > I'm convinced that such an attitude actively harms Debian and as such
> > should not be tolerated. That's why I've asked for tech-ctte technical
> > judgement on your decision to postpone the upload in wait of full code
> > review.
>
> If by stalling you mean, having to work on an unpleasant, distressful
> and annoying environment, when supposedly doing it for fun, while still
> managing to motivate myself enough to make progress by doing design,
> implementation, review and cleanup work; not merging code I deem
> technically not acceptable, regardless of the provenance (for which I
> don't think I've ever discriminated on, as can be seen from the amount
> of unmerged branches on my own repo, because they are not ready yet...)
> on a project like dpkg, which has far reaching repercusion compatibility
> wise, where we might have to live with issues forever or where package
> maintainers might need to do useless fixup work due to the consequences
> of those issues, on the whole distribution, then I guess, sure, guilty
> as charged...
I'm sorry Guillem, but you will not convince me with this side argument.
I'm terribly sorry for the stress you went through, I really am and I
wish nobody in Debian goes through something like that due to Debian
every again. But the above is not the point. The point is that you
picked the rules of the game ("code review must be") and actively
blocked others to participate in the game.
You may even pretend, here and now, that you would have welcomed others
to participate in the code review, but that is not the impression that
you gave for the past year. You've frequently worked on a private branch
and referring on -dpkg to changes made in it that have not been pushed
to any public place for a long time. This seems to have happened also
for the last "code review" after the experimental upload. How could you
possibly expect that attitude to encourage other to participate in code
review?
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} . o .
Maître de conférences ...... http://upsilon.cc/zack ...... . . o
Debian Project Leader ....... @zack on identi.ca ....... o o o
« the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club »
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