Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
Ross Gardler wrote:
Is it really asked too much to follow a list of well
documented changes like adjusting plugin names?
No, but the reality is that people do not follow a simple list of
instructions, they ask questions and take our time up, or worse still,
they move away from Forrest because it is too much work.
OK. I accept that reality (being part of it myself :-)) so it may be better to
write a script to migrate them automatically.
OTOH this very reality is also a good argument for investing time to
make the system as consistent and logical as can be to avoid
questions and user problems in the long run.
Agreed.
...
The right way, IMHO, is to deprecate old functionality to provide a
smooth migration from one version to the next rather than to force users
to learn a whole bunch of new things in order to upgrade.
...
Of course, sometimes this does not make sense, we need to weigh up each
individual cases on its own merits.
My opinion is we should accept this and admit that
we are not even 1.0 and we don't want to burden us with too much
backward compatibility issues before we get there.
From a technical perspective you are 100% correct. However, we have to
consider the community perspective too. Todays "basic" user is tomorrows
"power" user, todays "power" user is tomorrows committer.
If we annoy the "basic" user by making it too hard to upgrade they don't
become power users and we don't get new committers.
We have to balance technical vs. community issues, and this needs to be
done on a case by case basis.
It is trivial to either write an alias facility for the few plugins we
already have, or to write a script to update existing forrest.properties
files. In fact it will take less time for one individual to do than for
the community (as a collective) to answer the resulting user queries.
Great, so let's do it.
Go for it ;-)
My whole point was that it should be either that or let the user's do
it on upgrade. Not use this as a reason not so clean up
inconsistencies.
Agreed, in principle (meaning I hope to find the time to write such a
script, in the meantime lets have new plugins conform to a convention).
Btw. I really think that a survey of Forrest users, their use cases
and expectations would very useful for discussions like that.
>
Perhaps we can put a questionnaire on the user list?
Personally I find such "surveys" a waste of time, but that could be
because I don't know how to conduct meaningful surveys. I certainly
wouldn't stand in the way of anyone trying to understand our users needs.
Ross
