Citeren Andy Lester <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
On Sep 4, 2008, at 1:33 PM, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
It's not an entitlement, it's a shared goal of making Perl better. If a
maintainer is going to ignore test reports, perhaps its time to add a
co-maintainer.
Yes, something that indicates the age and number of open bugs for a
module, the age of any unapplied patches, and perhaps some other metrics
to indicate "maintainedness". Cross referencing that with popularity and
dependency chains would be a great triage system to start whipping CPAN
into shape.
Maybe what's so frustrating to me, and perhaps to chromatic, and
whoever else ignores CPAN Testers but doesn't discuss it, is that we're
being fed things that we should be thankful for and goddammit why
aren't we appreciative??!?
You shouldn't be thankful or appreciative. (IMHO)
The community should be (and is) thankful that you chose to put your
code out there for everyone to use and improve.
Automated testing is easy and (I believe) isn't that time consuming.
Writing code, solving bugs, adding features and making the code more
available (platform/configuration indipendent) isn't easy and
certainly can consume lots of time.
Thanks should go to the person that spends/spended the most time on
this. Meaning the author and contributors.
"Here are the things that we have determined are quality."
"Here are test reports reporting on failures for these things that we
care about you caring about."
"Maybe you should add a co-maintainer."
"Your responsibility as an author is to..."
It's obvious that the main idea behind these messages is to improve
the quality of the distributions on CPAN.
What the messages are ignoring is that it isn't (IMHO) the task/job of
the author.
In a perfect world each FAIL report would come with a patch attached
that the author can chose to apply. Unfortunally we are not living in
a perfect world...
Is a FAIL under configuration XYZ a problem?
To some (real) users it certainly can be.
But they have three choiches:
- Find the source of the problem and fix it themself (and contribute a patch)
- Contact the author asking for help
- Look for another solution
CPAN Testers is entirely based on the concept of *unsolicited advice*
in the name of helping the author.
In essence it is (IMHO) about helping the users of the module and not
the author.
The goal is to make the module more available.
If the author of the module choses to do so then that is great!
If the author does not then that is perfectly fine and then the FAILs
still serve a purpose:
- someone else might care a lot about your module and noticing the
FAIL reports and starts patching
- the users are (in theory) informed that the module is not expected
to work under configuration XYZ.
(Obviously it would be best that the author in that case isn't spammed
with FAIL reports but I belive work for that is in progress.)
From a beautiful article I've
reproduced at http://xoa.petdance.com/Unsolicited_advice
== snip ==
Life's little helpers reason that the first step toward improvement is
the realization that things need to be improved. That is why they feel
justified in approaching you when you are perfectly content in order to
point out that everything you do, eat, and love is a dreadful mistake.
Because they themselves are so full of good wishes for the rest of
humanity, they do not expect their beneficiaries to be petty. They
figure that upon being told how you have mismanaged your life, you will
be grateful for the offer of assistance and reassured that others are
watching out for you. It stands to reason that one who obviously does
not know what is best for himself would be relieved to find that others
are willing to take on that responsibility.
After all, they don't just stop after telling you that is wrong, but
always go on to explain in detail how you can do things the way they do
them. In other words, the right way.
== snip ==
And then, when we say "OK, I'm not interested in stopping smoking,
losing weight, or checking for Perl version 5.6.1," we're told how full
of shit we are.
Which is a pity. Given that you already did a great job by making your
code available to everyone.
Why should I release my software on CPAN if part of the price of entry
is being spammed and told what I should be doing?
People will always complain. It's a lot easier to complain that the
author isn't doing their 'job' 'correctly' then helping the author out
by sending patches.
What you shouldn't forget is you are hearing much less from the many
many users that are using your software and are very grateful for and
happy with it.
Kind regards,
Bram
