[development] blocks by role in 4.7.0? RTBC?

[Jason Flatt]

On Saturday 25 March 2006 01:42 am, Derek Wright wrote:
> argh. ;)  dries himself thought this was worthy of getting in 4.7.0.
> kieran has talked about this feature as the "#1 requested usability
> feature from admins" (right?).  there have been *dozens* of forum
> posts about it.  the code is ready.  it's been reviewed and tested
> many times.  for apparently no good reason, it sat here for a month,
> unloved.  :( 

We've been in feature freeze mode (supposedly) for several months.  It's not 
something that will start with the RC series, but something that started at 
the end of last year before the beta series was released.  The reason it sat 
unloved is because everyone's been focusing on what's already in 4.7: fixing 
critical bugs and making 4.7 stable.  Beta is about stabilizing what's 
already there, not adding to it.  RC is about making sure that what we think 
is stable, actually is stable, not making it stable.  Adding a new feature at 
the doorstep of RC is not making it stable, but potentially breaking it 
again, no matter how well tested the patch is.

> i'm all for getting 4.7.0 out the door, but spending 10 
> minutes now to finally commit the patch

10 minutes to commit the patch, and a week to a month (or more) of regression 
testing and finding & fixing the bugs it /will/ cause.  Hopefully it will 
only be a week and it won't produce any new critical bugs.

> can save hours (days?) of 
> needless support and admin time hacking around this problem for the
> entire lifespan of 4.7.  i'm also all for speeding up the
> devel/release cycle, but i'm sure it'll be months before 6.8.0 is out,
> and at least a year before most drupal sites are running 4.8, probably
> longer.  i think it'd be a shame to force all our users to suffer
> through another release without this crucial feature.

I think it would be a shame to make users wait longer for 4.7, which adding 
this feature would surely do.

> i too, have 
> other features i'd love to see, but they aren't as universally
> requested as this one, so i'm willing to wait on those.  also, since
> this *does* alter the db schema (it adds a new table), if we don't get
> it committed before the RC, there's no hope for it before 6.8.

IMO, there's no hope now.

> i'm 
> sure many of us would be disappointed in that, from dries on down the
> chain. ;)

As much as I would like to see this feature added (I myself would have used it 
a few times), I would be far more disappointed if 4.7 were delayed yet 
another week or more, as it will definitely be if that feature is added now.  
I have been waiting for features already in 4.7 for production sites for a 
couple of months.

> steven, can you comment?  i think dries left you in charge as the
> ultimate arbitrator of last resort. ;)
>
> thanks,
> -derek

I am only a plankton in the Drupal Development Food Chain, and my opinion 
doesn't count for much, but in my mind this is a common sense issue.

-- 
Jason Flatt
http://www.oadae.net/
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