Ed Gould writes: > On Mar 16, 2007, at 6:24, James Carlson wrote: > > Is it your intention that we should just disallow all "experimental" > > projects? That's effectively what this project is attempting to do, > > and the implication of disallowing the use of Volatile for the fluid > > bits. I'm somewhat in accord with that prohibition, but I think we > > have a clash with senior management here. > > No, I wasn't intending to ban experimental interfaces. And maybe > that's the right way to look at this interface, too. Rather, I had > seen this interface more as a case of, we don't have time (== > resources) to do this right, so we're going to release it with > something ugly (use $EDITOR on a text file) to get by.
Yes; that's close to what I see. > I guess that's > really what I was uncomfortable with. In the end, there may not be a > difference to the customer. I don't think there is. Experimental things are naturally going to have rough edges to them -- I think the questions we have to answer are whether we will allow any experiments and, if so, how best to warn users in what they're stepping. I'm ok with this bit being ugly, provided that users are adequately warned, and that there's a clear and safe alternative. (That alternative is "do nothing" -- the default for phase 0 is to leave the existing scripts and mechanisms in place, so the system behaves exactly the same way unless the user deliberately enables NWAM; presumably and hopefully after reading some documentation.) > > Also note that basically none of this matters a whit. You could call > > it Committed if you like. Because our taxonomy is based on releases, > > and this project isn't targeting an Update, the interface is not > > frozen until Nevada actually ships as a release. We apparently have > > no plans to do that at all at any point in the future. So, by the > > time NWAM phase 1, 2, and 3 come around, and Nevada still hasn't > > shipped, we'll still be able to make incompatible changes, even in > > Committed interfaces. > > I think this situation got a lot muddier when SXDE got released. Quite true. I tried to start a conversation about the confusion inherent in this situation of "releases that aren't releases" _before_ SXDE was released, but was shouted down by the former PAC chair. It is what it is. Anyway, we're veering off-topic for this case. The point I was making was that the disagreement itself was so many angels on the head of a pin; no amount of stability will matter for something integrating into Nevada unless (and until) Nevada actually becomes a release with a schedule and specified content. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <james.d.carlson at sun.com> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677
