Bug#457473: ITP: extended_threading -- Extension of the python threading api

[Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>]

On 22-Dec-07, 11:48 (CST), Sandro Tosi <matrixhasu@gmail.com> wrote: 
> This is what I feel about it: ITP should be filled the moment you'd
> like to package a piece of software, so you're not supposed to know it
> in deep; thus, the long description (that describes what the package
> does) can be rewritten during packaging phase.

If you don't know what the package does well enough to write a long
description, how do you know you want to package it? :-) It doesn't
require "deep" knowledge, it just needs to be sufficient to help your
potential users decide if the package might solve their problem.

And of course the description may change later; I didn't mean to imply
that I thought it needed to be fixed in stone. But people *do* look at
the ITP, and far better to find and fix any problems before the initial
package upload, yes? Package descriptions are a core way that people
will find your package, and getting good info into a small amount of
space is non-trivial: they can almost always be improved, and it's worth
doing.

I disagree with "ITP should be filed the moment you'd like to package
the software"; I suspect that such a concept is one of the reasons we
currently have something like 1200 open ITPs, many of which are years
old. ITPs should be done when you are actually prepared to start working
on the packaging. After all, what's the worst that can happen? Someone
else pacakges it first! How is this a problem?


> Moreover, I've seen *many* itp without even a single word in long
> description (or with the template sentence): they do not give any
> additional clue to us then the short description, here at least you
> have an "idea" of what's in the package.

I've seen those too, and I've responded to a good many of them. That
doesn't make them okay. While it may seem otherwise, I'm not trying to
pick on you in particular; your ITP just had the bad luck to finally
overrun my tolerance.

> Anyway, if Steve's suggestion is a shared feeling, I try to spend more
> time in ITP long description as done in this one, and here it is an
> "extended" :) version of long desc:
> 
> This python module is designed to add some features to python's threading
> environment; specifically
>  - inheritance (subclassing) of locks
>  - debugging utility
>  - timeouts with locks
>  - locks with both exclusive and non-exclusive characteristics
>  - read/write mode lock (write locks are exclusive, read locks are not)
>  - "safe" object based locks to help debug lock code.

Excellent.

Steve

-- 
Steve Greenland
    The irony is that Bill Gates claims to be making a stable operating
    system and Linus Torvalds claims to be trying to take over the
    world.       -- seen on the net