Thorkil.. bravo. I'm quite glad you posted this, please continue to
speak your mind publicly. You make very valid points which made me think.
Building positive energy and getting the wheels turning was and remains
important. Eric is doing terrific work here.
But, it is also just the right time for a cool wind of absolutely honest
hard-headed self-examination. Good developers will only support a
project which includes this kind of rigour in its DNA.
I remember when I last jumped on board with darcs and started trying to
commit patches. I was more in the get-the-wheels-turning camp, and I was
sometimes challenged by David's pickiness. What, can you afford to turn
away developers ? Is this the way to grow a humming ecosystem of darcs
hackers ? Why fear a little code churn ? I asked. I still feel that way
- we need ways to harness the energy and excitement of new recruits.
And, I see more clearly that darcs can't afford to lose clarity, or
quality, or get bogged down in non-essential details. On the contrary,
it needs to keep its current high standard and push hard for higher
ground. A test-infected development culture. Documentation receiving the
highest attention, as you said. Modularity. Preserving and communicating
conceptual integrity. Finding and removing any sloppiness on our part
about theory or real-world difficulties or docs or anything else. Being
so dedicated to creating the best possible results, that in the extreme
case we would willingly move en masse to camp or some other successor,
bringing what we can and dropping what we can't, without regrets.
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