David: I know how to tell you that I want something merged, but I don't know how to make it smooth or fun. 

You said it's a pain right now. Would you develop that? I want to know what I can do to make the Inbox process suck less for you (as a core committer.)

This is actually pretty important for me, because it's a great way for me to get wonderful feedback about the code I'm writing. "What's this method you're trying to add? You know there's already a method for that called #foo, right?" Etcetera. 

It's such a great opportunity to learn that I've never wanted strongly to ask for Trunk access, even after I hit the point where I felt pretty comfortable with Smalltalk. I figure I'll ask when I actually need it, like if I wanted to bring over my themes engine from Cuis, in which case there'd be enough code that merging it in would be a pain for someone else. 

That said, I really value the feedback I get from the core dev team, so I want to make doing so as painless as possible for them. 

I note that there is very little process around the Inbox covered in Andreas' original development process document. We should amend the doc when we figure out what works. I don't mind doing that, and I would bet that Mr. Hirzel or Mr. Haupt could be convinced to step in if I am unexpectedly run over by a bus. 

On Apr 15, 2011, at 12:42 PM, "David T. Lewis" <lewis at mail.msen.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 10:19:49AM -0700, Casey Ransberger wrote:
>> The more I think about it, the less I want Levente blocked on integrating the menu item I added and committed to the inbox while he's trying to checkin 14 commits that make our streams twice as fast.
>> 
>> I think the root problem is probably communication, and I think it might be partly that newcomers sometimes start off a little shy. I remember when I first arrived, I knew I didn't know what I was doing, and asking to get my bits merged felt a little awkward. 
>> 
>> I also think that the healthiest solution will involve non-core devs taking ownership of the inbox in a lot of ways. 
>> 
>> Rather than make a single person a choke point, or force all of the core devs to do more work or lose their commit bit, maybe I can convince a core dev or two to volunteer to be goto people for merging inbox changes?
>> 
>> What do the core developers think about this?
>> 
>> I must say, I do like Chris' nag-mail idea. 
> 
> I think you should turn the question around backwards. Instead of
> "what can we do to to make people work on the inbox?" ask "what can
> we do to the inbox process to make people want to work on it?".
> 
> For me, working on something in the inbox should be an enjoyable
> thing to do for an hour or so in the morning with a nice cup of
> fresh coffee. Right now it's kind of a pain to figure out what's
> going in the the inbox, so I tend to find something else to do
> while I'm sipping that cup of coffee.
> 
> $0.02
> 
> Dave
> 
>