Re: Sync Rep for 2011CF1

dpage@pgadmin.org (Dave Page) writes:
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 6:55 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:43 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> writes:
>>>> ... Well, the current CommitFest ends in one week, ...
>>>
>>> Really?  I thought the idea for the last CF of a development cycle was
>>> that it kept going till we'd dealt with everything.  Arbitrarily
>>> rejecting stuff we haven't dealt with doesn't seem fair.
>>
>> Uh, we did that with 8.4 and it was a disaster.  The CommitFest lasted
>> *five months*. We've been doing schedule-based CommitFests ever since
>> and it's worked much better.
>
> Rejecting stuff because we haven't gotten round to dealing with it in
> such a short period of time is a damn good way to limit the number of
> contributions we get. I don't believe we've agreed at any point that
> the last commitfest should be the same time length as the others (when
> we originally came up with the commitfest idea, it certainly wasn't
> expected), and deciding that without giving people advanced notice is
> a really good way to piss them off and encourage them to go work on
> other things.
>
> If we're going to put a time limit on this - and I think we should -
> we should publish a date ASAP, that gives everyone a fair chance to
> finish their work - say, 4 weeks.
>
> Then, if we want to make the last commitfest the same length as the
> others next year, we can make that decision and document those plans.

There *is* a problem that there doesn't seem to be enough time to
readily allow development of larger features without people getting
stuck fighting with the release periods.  But that's not the problem
taking place here.  It was documented, last May, that the final
CommitFest for 9.1 was to complete 2011-02-15, and there did seem to be
agreement on that.

It sure looks to me like there are going to be a bunch of items that,
based on the recognized policies, need to get deferred to 9.2, and the
prospects for Sync Rep getting into 9.1 don't look notably good to me.

Looking at things statistically, the 9.1 commitfests have had the
following numbers of items:
 #1 - 2010-09 - 52, of which 26 were committed #2 - 2010-11 - 43, of which 23 were committed #3 - 2011-01 - 98, of
which35 have been committed, and 10 are                considered ready to commit.
 

It may appear unfair to not offer everyone a "fair chance to finish
their work," but it's not as if the date wasn't published Plenty Long
Ago. and well-publicized.

But deferring the end of the CommitFest would be Not Fair to those that
*did* get their proposed changes ready for the preceding Fests.  We
cannot evade unfairness.

It's definitely readily arguable that fairness requires that:
- Items not committable by 2011-02-15 be deferred to the 2011-Next fest
  There are around 25 items right now that are sitting with [Waiting  for Author] and [Returned with Feedback]
statuses. They largely seem  like pretty fair game for "next fest."
 
- Large items that weren't included in the 2010-11 fest be considered  problematic to try to integrate into 9.1
  There sure seem to be some large items in the 2011-01 fest, which I  thought wasn't supposed to be the case.

We shouldn't just impose policy for the sake of imposing policy, but I
do recall Really Long CommitFests being pretty disastrous.  And there's
*SO* much outstanding in this particular fest that it's getting past
time for doing some substantial triage so that reviewer attentions may
be directed towards the items most likely to be acceptable for 9.1.

I hate to think that 9.1 won't include Simon's SR material, but that may
have to be.
-- 
http://www3.sympatico.ca/cbbrowne/slony.html
"It's a pretty rare beginner who isn't clueless.  If beginners weren't
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-- david parsons