Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Sebastian Bergmann wrote:
At last weekend's EuroFoo [1] I attended Marc-Andre Lemburg's talk [2] on the Python development process.
I really wish we had a process similar to Python's PEPs [3] [4] for PHP.
Having guidelines for issues like adding a new module [5] or deprecating a module [6] not only makes the development consistent but also transparent to our users.
It smells a little too processy to me, but I wouldn't mind a system that borrowed some of the ideas. Like a single collection point for feature proposals and a common format for them. We could simply steal PEAR's PEPR infrastructure for this (http://pear.php.net/pepr/pepr-overview.php).
PEPr has been pretty useful, but there are some pitfalls with the current design of PEPr. It seems that in the proposal stage, most developers don't even notice a package. At the voting stage, the proposal can't be modified (for obvious reasons), and so many flame wars have erupted from those who have not noticed it versus those who have devoted lots of energy to it. Also, since developers tend to be gone occasionally, the voting period of 2 weeks can sometimes be too short to get a real sense of consensus.
I'd say the best aspect of PEPr is the centralized location for all ideas. Using voting to make decisions is in my opinion somewhat of a failure though. Voting could more successfully be used to determine popularity/necessity of a feature or proposal (i.e. allow people with cvs accounts to not only vote, but to change their vote as they learn more about a feature). Then the developers can react better to the users' changing needs. Also, PHP has very active and clear leaders in Zeev and Andi, and so decision-making won't need to be as democratic as it might otherwise have to be.
I don't mean to discourage the idea, but if you do decide to go with a PEPr-like system, it would be good to learn from PEAR's first go at it.
Greg
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