[squeak-dev] Commit messages revisited

Ronald Spengler ron.spengler at gmail.com
Fri Oct 23 03:06:12 UTC 2009


Two things:

 - I like to see what (for example,) Nicholas has just done in the
trunk *in the context of the broader dialog.* Context is everything.

 - I got a very warm fuzzy feeling knowing that there were lots of
eyes on what I was doing when I put changes to Compiler into the inbox
when I was removing the old colorPrint feature. One of the things that
makes this community epic is the level of peer review and feedback
that I get; if I've done something stupid, I'm learning about it from
you almost right away. In a digest, I think I'd lose some of that.

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Hernán Morales Durand
<hernan.morales at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please, set up another list for commit messages, as Laurence said the
> mailing list is for programming in/using Squeak, not for developing
> the Squeak itself. There are many options before expecting/requiring
> 1000+ subscribers to create filtering rules in their e-mail clients.
> Cheers,
>
> Hernán
>
> 2009/10/22 Laurence Rozier <laurence.rozier at gmail.com>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> One non-zero-sum approach would be to leverage an email aware service such
>> as Posterous. By investing a few minutes of time the board could obtain an
>> email address at posterous.com to send commits to. Then people could use any
>> RSS reader they wanted and use or create more powerful Squeak-based tools
>> for search/repurposing. With a few more minutes Posterous can be configured
>> to autopost to Twitter, Tumblr or many other places. I've already done
>> this(http://squeakcommits.posterous.com/) for my own benefit and also so
>> folks can see but it would be better IMO for it to be an official feed.
>>
>> It's worth considering me thinks, that according to the Squeak Wiki
>>
>>> The primary mailing list for anyone interested in programming in Squeak.
>>> It is a lively and busy forum for discussion on all things related to
>>> Squeak!
>>
>> so getting a screen full of commit messages is probably not a good first
>> experience for the seasoned developer coming from another language looking
>> for how to *use* Squeak rather than maintain/develop it. Maybe there needs
>> to be another list for folk not working on the trunk but regardless of which
>> way things go choices are available.
>>
>> Laurence
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 11:35 PM, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Folks -
>>>
>>> We had a little board discussion about the commit messages posted to
>>> Squeak-dev and I wanted to move the discussion over here. I think there are
>>> some excellent arguments to be made for commit messages in general, both
>>> from the point of awareness, but perhaps more importantly because (quoting
>>> from a message that said it better than I could):
>>>
>>>        "The real value comes when, for example, someone like Dan Ingalls
>>> who is reading squeak-dev but not tracking active development notices a
>>> change in code which he has an interest in or knowledge of and catches an
>>> issue that might otherwise go unnoticed for a significant period of time.
>>>  Better yet, when someone not otherwise engaged sees a submission that
>>> really grabs her imagination and inspires her to contribute or develop some
>>> piece of software using the ideas.  Related these bits of code have
>>> educational value.  I don't believe any digest view is going to have the
>>> same value for the simple reason that most people are not going to look past
>>> the subject of the message or maybe the first few lines, that is the one and
>>> only chance to grab them."
>>>
>>> I think this is a great summary for why these messages are useful. On the
>>> other hand, when something happens like in the last two days where we have
>>> literally some fifty commit messages clogging the inbox, the viewers at
>>> gmane or nabble (which can't be filtered easily), the spam factor is
>>> considerable.
>>>
>>> What I have been proposing is to use the mailman digest features to have
>>> the commit messages go to a separate commit list and cross-post a daily
>>> digest from the commit list to Squeak-dev. This should help us to keep
>>> awareness up and I think dealing with a single commit summary per day would
>>> keep the volume low enough for people to keep up with.
>>>
>>> I'm curious what people think about this idea or if you have other
>>> proposals for balancing these tradeoffs. We'll need some help with the
>>> mailman setup as well since at the very least we'll need to limit the amount
>>> for the diffs to something reasonable or else these message will go over the
>>> limit for Squeak-dev. We have also discussed a more elaborate approach that
>>> creates repository hierarchies to search for ancestor versions but whichever
>>> way we'd do it we'll have to make sure that the initial report is within
>>> reason and need some help here.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>  - Andreas
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>



-- 
Ron



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