Just want to share my opinion on HAML release management. Right now, two people on my team are investigating form_for breakages, and playing a "find what god damn minor version of HAML 2.2 works fine" game. For _second_ day in a row. Why? Because HAML introduces new features, sometimes features that target next major unreleased version of Rails (a year plus now in the works, with _major_ changes of internals), in its _minor_ releases.
We did not patch HAML (readability and extensibility of HAML code is another topic, I won't get into it here), did not patch Rails' rendering, do not even have lots of plugins installed. Is it too much to ask for, not break things completely in minor releases that all other projects out there only use for bug fixing? Was it so hard to start a HAML 3.0 (or 2.4 or whatever) and work on Rails 3 forward compatibility (read: satisfy your alpha geekery) there? RSpec team, for example, started 2.0 work for Rails 3.0 in a completely separate repository, and clearly explained that 1.x is now for 2.x releases of Rails, while 2.x is for 3.x releases. Patches are welcome by the HAML team, no doubt about it. Yet HAML code base is such a magical piece that hacks on top already pretty complicated rendering from web frameworks, that it is pretty challenging to wrap your head around it. And reading logs in Git does not help one bit: because things are packed into the same branch in a completely random manner. Rails 3.0 compatibility change here, new SASS feature there, all on the "stable" branch. HAML feels like it is a piece of engineering created by designers. As bad as design created by engineers. HAML may be markup haiku, but with two gigatons of magic in the code base, and not following any release practices known in the software engineering world, it feels scary to upgrade HAML, every single time. This is sad, people. This is so sad. Just my 2ยข. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Haml" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/haml?hl=en.
