[development] Slow down with the official releases of contrib already, ok? ; )

[Derek Wright]

On May 22, 2008, at 1:33 PM, Darrel O'Pry wrote:

> it's a statement that code and process is easier to change than  
> people and my conviction that processes should adhere to people not  
> the other way around

Then I should give up and we should go back to the jungle where  
contrib is a vast wasteland of unversioned goo.  That's what project*  
and the drupal.org contrib repository should return to if the code/ 
process should adhere to people instead of the other way around.  No  
thanks. ;)


If anything, the last ~1.5 years have shown that the process is still  
too flexible, and there should be more ways that it forces the people  
to adhere to sane, consistent behavior, not less.  For example:

#252473: Prevent people from putting "-dev" in CVS tag names [1]

and perhaps even:

#90968: enforce sequential release tags in xcvs-taginfo [2]

Not to mention disasters like:

#198278: Prevent bogus branches by checking at commit time, too [3]

that resulted in messes that still aren't completely resolved:

#152832: cleanup faulty branches [4]


Of course, if everyone were careful, and already comfortable with  
sane release management, it'd be a different story.  Sadly, the d.o  
infrastructure mostly has to cater to the lowest common denominator  
in terms of ability and experience.  I've been trying to balance the  
needs of experienced, clueful people like you and me, with the  
reality of 100s of brand new contributors and their propensity to  
break things, not to mention everyone's aversion to reading  
documentation. ;) I won't claim I've always made all the right  
decisions and choices, but I believe I've done a pretty good job of  
it.  If you have disagreements, concrete help and constructive  
criticism would be much more appreciated than adding to the chorus of  
empty complaints ("it's offensive that update_status went into  
core"), even if you're already a valuable contributor in other ways.

Thanks,
-Derek

[1] http://drupal.org/node/252473
[2] http://drupal.org/node/90968
[3] http://drupal.org/node/198278
[4] http://drupal.org/node/152832


p.s. "Them's fightin' words ;)" was meant as a joke and a pop-culture  
reference, nothing more.