On Dec 3, 2008, at 2:27 PM, Jason Rutherglen (JIRA) wrote:
Hoss wrote: "sort of mythical "Lucene powerhouse"
Lucene seems to run itself quite differently than other open source
Java projects. Perhaps it would be good to spell out the reasons
for the reluctance to move ahead with features that developers work
on, that work, but do not go in. The developer contributions seem
to be quite low right now, especially compared to neighbor projects
such as Hadoop. Is this because fewer people are using Lucene? Or
is it due to the reluctance to work with the developer community?
Unfortunately the perception in the eyes of some people who work on
search related projects it is the latter.
Or, could it be that Hadoop is relatively new and in vogue at the
moment, very malleable and buggy(?) and has a HUGE corporate sponsor
who dedicates lots of resources to it on a full time basis, whilst
Lucene has been around in the ASF for 7+ years (and 12+ years total)
and has a really large install base and thus must move more
deliberately and basically has 1 person who gets to work on it full
time while the rest of us pretty much volunteer? That's not an
excuse, it's just the way it is. I personally, would love to work on
Lucene all day every day as I have a lot of things I'd love to engage
the community on, but the fact is I'm not paid to do that, so I give
what I can when I can. I know most of the other committers are that
way too.
Thus, I don't think any one of us has a reluctance to move ahead with
features or bug fixes. Looking at CHANGES.txt, I see a lot of
contributors. Looking at java-dev and JIRA, I see lots of engagement
with the community. Is it near the historical high for traffic, no
it's not, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I think it's a sign
that Lucene is pretty stable.
What we do have a reluctance for are patches that don't have tests
(i.e. this one), patches that massively change Lucene APIs in non-
trivial ways or break back compatibility or are not kept up to date.
Are we perfect? Of course not. I, personally, would love for there
to be a way that helps us process a larger volume of patches (note, I
didn't say commit a larger volume). Hadoop's automated patch tester
would be a huge start in that, but at the end of the day, Lucene still
works the way all ASF projects do: via meritocracy and
volunteerism. You want stuff committed, keep it up to date, make
it manageable to review, document it, respond to questions/concerns
with answers as best you can. To that end, a real simple question can
go a long way and getting something committed, and it simply is: "Hey
Lucener's, what else can I do to help you review and commit LUCENE-
XXXX?" Lather, rinse, repeat. Next thing you know, you'll be on the
receiving end as a committer.
-Grant
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