[development] Drupal Enhancement Proposals (DEPs)

[James Walker]

On 11/14/05 6:07 PM, Dries Buytaert wrote:
> 
> On 14 Nov 2005, at 20:46, Ber Kessels wrote:
>> It is what got that form API in. It is what holds back Those Big 
>> Issues from leveraging from yadiyadia level to Real Code Level, think 
>> drupal.css, think taxonomy.module cleanup, think CCK ideals, think 
>> install API. etcetc.
> 
> Erm, the CCK plans are pretty well documented.  They have been for about 
> a year.  Similarly, the install API has been documented too.  Your 
> examples show that central documentation is no guarantee for success 
> (however they are often a necessary step).
> 

Hrm. this is a good point ... and has made me rethink my position a bit. 
The thing biggest thing I think i'd like to see come from this idea, is 
a centralized mechanism for doing such organizing. My reasoning is this 
- using myself as an example - there are several "bigger projects" 
underway, that I know of because I'm pretty involved in the community, 
but I'm not directly involved in them all... however, they will have 
fairly large impact on my work (thinking of CCK and install , e.g.). 
Therefore, it would be really nice to have a place where i could go to 
check up on the projects (and, perhaps, discover some new ones).

The community is becoming very large for any one person to keep tabs on 
it all... this might help, no?

But you're right. I withdraw my previous requirement comment. I think 
the important thing is not that DEPs are required - because then we end 
up in the rathole of *which* changes require DEPs. However, central 
organization would be very helpful.  And i mean beyond "but it's all on 
drupal.org". As wonderful as steven's search patches are... it's not 
quite a one page overview :P

>> I firmly beleive we reached a level where we can no longer deal with 
>> Big Changes, unless we form subgroups. Which, again, is what I got, 
>> this is all about. I hope so in any way.
> 
> I firmly believe in people organizing themselves, and empowering them to 
> do so.  I do not believe in forcing people to write proposals.  There 
> are much larger projects than Jabber, Xaraya, PEAR or Python that are 
> known to be successful without having proposals.  Two random examples 
> are the Linux kernel and KDE.

This is incredibly well said. But i do think empowering the proposals 
could prove to be very... well... powerful. but, who am I kidding... I'd 
be the first to whine about having to write these things :P

The other thing - and I realize now it's a bit tangential - but I'd like 
to see a more transparent contributer approval process. but , i'll leave 
that for another thread some day...

> Feel free to write a proposal for the drupal.css or taxonomy.module 
> clean up, or to get consensus before you start writing code.  I'm cool 
> with that.  It's just not mandatory.
> 


-- 
James Walker :: http://walkah.net/ :: xmpp:walkah at walkah.net