Re: 8.5 development schedule

* Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
> > What I think we have is a lot of people who are waiting
> > for feedback, and we should try to give them some.  I also know that
> > reviewing 60 patches for the November CommitFest was a ton of work,
> > and the reviewers (including the committers) ran out of steam well
> > before we got done.  That, and not any desire to jump the queue, is
> > the reason why I would like to get the reviewing process started
> > before the patch list grows unmanageably large.
>
> Yeah.  In core's private discussion of this, I too was arguing for
> running a CommitFest ASAP, in order to have some motion on the existing
> patch backlog.  I don't know that we'd actually end up committing many,
> but we need to provide feedback so people can take the next steps.

I'm in agreement that we should try to provide feedback (in general, to
be honest) on patches/suggestions/ideas/designs/etc as quickly as
possible.  The commitfest approach is good for this when it's "in
motion", but it's been stale for months.  +1 from me for starting early.

To flip it around a bit, I don't know that there's actually a moratorium
on providing feedback?  If people aren't busy working on 8.4 (I hope not
at this point, except testing.. :), have patches that they've submitted
and are waiting for feedback on, or aren't otherwise busy..  I say feel
free to pull patches and review/comment on.  As I like to tell the
people who work with me- being proactive and self-starting is almost
always looked on favorably.

I'm like to encourage the above for the entire development cycle, for
that matter.  Perhaps it won't change much (I'm confident we'll still
need a "commitfest mom", etc) but I don't see why we should actively
prevent it.

> People who *were* following the project calendar (like me for instance)
> have been largely ignoring the 8.5 queue, so many of those patches are
> just sitting out there without any substantive comment.

Certainly following the calendar is a good thing, it's just that we're
about to pass a milestone on the project calendar and need to decide
what we're gonna do next and when.

> Right at the moment I imagine a large fraction of those patches are
> broken anyway by the recent pgindent run --- has anyone checked?

I havn't yet, but it certainly sounds like a great idea.  Maybe we could
even have a "mini-fix-pgindent" commitfest in the last 2 weeks of July..
Thanks,
    Stephen