We have several plugins in Quantum currently, and several more waiting for review. Several plugins ares currently waiting for review, and this problem is only going to get worse. We don't have enough core devs, who are very familiar with the underlying systems, to properly evaluate the plugins. I don't think this problem is going to go away, so we should remove the plugins from the main Quantum repository and require they be stored on their own.
The first issue I worry about is Testing. Running the functional tests, and the plugin itself, requires access to soft and hardware. Some is open source and available to anyone, while some of these systems are proprietary. We can't expect the Core devs to have access to all of the proprietary equipment. If the core devs are not able to fully test the plugin, or even see the system it interfaces with, they can't be expected to fairly evaluate the plugin. This would lead to rubber stamping any commits that comes across Gerrit, and I think that would be bad for the Quantum codebase. A quick breeze through review does not help the plugin maintainers, its an extra hurdle without the benefit of review. Once the plugins are in Quantum, I'm worried about their maintenance. Keeping the plugins up to the quality expected of Quantum we will require developers proficient in the underlying system. If those people fall behind, or leave, what amount of regression will trigger the removal? We have a lot of changes planned for the near future, and requiring that every plugin be up to date will cause delays. It should be the job of the plugin's maintainer to keep the plugin up to date with Quantum, not the other way around. We can point out the repo of each plugin, but the plugin authors/maintainers should be responsible for documentation, maintenance, and compatibility. Thanks, Aaron Lee -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~netstack Post to : netstack@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~netstack More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
