On Feb 4, 2008, at 6:28 PM, Dylan Beaudette wrote:
On Sunday 03 February 2008, Hamish wrote:
Markus Neteler wrote:
I would like to propose to grant SVN write access to Ivan Shmakov
who got very active to suggest improvements for the core
libraries of
GRASS. You will have seen his contributions in the grass-dev mailing
list.
Hi,
Ivan seems like a decent fellow and I welcome his expertise. So "+1"
from me.
I would like to informally propose that in future we wait for a
contributer to be active on the -dev mailing list for some time
(perhaps 6 months?) before raising the question of granting SVN write
access. This gives the user a chance to develop a track record,
demonstrate an understanding of the codebase*, and get a feel for how
our little development team works. In addition it gives PSC voters a
chance to be confident in our votes rather than rubber stamping our
approval on a mostly unknown entity.
You bring up some good points. Markus did provide a nice run down
of Ivan's
activity- and betwee that and watching the dev list I thought
enough time had
past. I am not as familiar with the code base as the main
developers, and
therefore my vote does not carry the same weight as the more
seasoned devs.
How can we formalize / generalize the approach that you are
suggesting? Would
a mandatory time limit (you suggested 6 months) be sufficient?
time is probably not a good measure - one person can show in one week
what another one shows (or has time to show) in a month or more.
It should be based on the contributions (this can be kept simple
or as complicated as imaginable - e.g. type, size, time interval of
contributions etc.) -
I would vote for simple.
[*] I think we are in pretty good shape, but merely due to the age of
the codebase we seem to have a large number of undocumented "this is
done for historical reasons" spots to watch out for. Whereas the
initial reaction of a newcomer is to immediately try and fix
something
that looks awkward, then get shot down by a long time devel. This
bears
the potential for bad feelings and lost volunteers. The question
is how
to mentor + promote an eager and competent helper to full developer
status while protecting the codebase from well meaning yet
unintentional damage?
Although it might require a little coordination- maybe it would be
possible
for the senior devs to 'adopt' a junior.
that is what practically happens because somebody has to submit the
new code
and that developer (I guess it is most often Markus) usually
communicates
with the new developer and tests the submitted code - that is the
time consuming part,
so that is where you want to provide the svn access as soon as
reasonably possible.
Having to test and submit both your own code and a code of one or
more other
people for 6 months can be quite a challenge, especially when the
developer
is particularly active and capable (and we like to see those).
I would suggest something more like an incubation time - in our case
the PSC developer would motion that a new developer is up for SVN
access
vote so the PSC can look at what
he has contributed, test the changes that he has submitted and after
additional set of submissions that PSC has a chance to carefully
monitor,
the PSC developer would ask for a vote. PSC may decide that more time
is needed -
but that probably won't happen too often,
Helena
Not exactly sure how this would pan
out, but it having a mentor for the first 6 months (or however long
we decide
on) might make the learning process simpler. This approach would
really only
be appropriate for those volunteers truly interested in SVN write
access- so
perhaps those individuals should mention this upfront.
just some ideas...
Dylan'
Hamish
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Dylan Beaudette
Soil Resource Laboratory
http://casoilresource.lawr.ucdavis.edu/
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341
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