On 8/22/06, Kevan Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The best practices/guidelines should not be strict dogma -- common
sense should prevail. It's communication that's important, not
process.
The statements above are what should really prevail from this
conversation. I agree with this sentiment because, IMO, a process is
meant to guide the direction of a set of tasks. It is not meant to be
dogmatically enforced. I feel I understand The Apache Way and all too
often I've seen process enforced for process sake, rather than
allowing common sense to prevail and doing what makes the most sense
in the given situation. Of course, it's also not always a matter of
what you say, but how you say it.
Guidelines are something along the lines of:
1) For larger changes (or potentially controversial changes),
announce your intentions. Give the community an indication of what
you're planning. You should allow enough time (and detail) to allow
the community to understand and discuss.
2) Before you commit your changes, document your change. Describe
what you are doing, why you are doing it, and provide an overview of
how you did it (or a roadmap on how you plan on doing it).
I also agree with the two items noted above. A simple message to
announce your intentions would be really great. But this also doesn't
mean that such an announcement needs to spiral into a debate about how
or why something should be implemented.
Additionally, all too often when I'm digging into how something works
I find that there is little to no documentation so I'm forced to
question others about it which in turn just aggravates those people
because I'm bugging them so often. I'd really like to see a peer
pressure system enforced where we are telling each to document changes
and new features.
Bruce
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