(Dan on your particular issue -- I actually don't know how to do it either. I don't know the details of Confluence and/or the wiki. Does anyone?) I'll finish off issues 834 and 839 for you as best I can see.
Grant to your question about what I think we should do -- it's 'shrink the zoo', clean up, and save broader work for "Mahout2". For 0.6, my asks are: - Please help me clean out JIRA by closing a lot of the old issues that we should admit won't happen. If it's not related to core, existing algorithms, if it's not a bug fix, polish, it should be WontFix, because it's not happening before 1.0, which is nearly forever away, still. - (A mild request to please fix what you can in JIRA; I've fixed anything I feel remotely capable of.) - Once we're down to perhaps less than 10 issues for 0.6, everyone have a go at filing a couple important clean-up to-dos that you can commit to complete within a month. - Anything that isn't fixed by December is WontFix and we release 0.6. I realize it's drastic, but it's a coherent position. On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Dan Brickley <[email protected]> wrote: > [snip] > > Interesting discussion, and maybe a good time for those of us making > use of all this code to remember to say 'thanks'. So, er yeah, thanks. > > One thing I would like to bring up, as you talk this stuff through, is > that there are a few of us on the periphery of Mahout development, > e.g. who might have helped track down a bug or few, or suggested a > patch, but who are more on the user side of the fence than core > developers or "committer material". > > Maybe you can think about ways of making more use of us, or more > targeted use? I guess the possibilities vary from case to case. For my > part I've gone chasing into specific issues when they've stood between > me and getting some job done, and that's hard to target. > > I've never quite felt sure how to feel about opening JIRAs here. I > used it previously in a more corporate environment which set different > expectations. With Apache/Mahout I always feel a bit guilty opening > something I'm not likely to try fixing myself. > > Would you prefer us to keep some stronger sense of ownership / > commitment when we raise them? Or maybe it's best to make sure > everything is recorded in JIRA, even if there's no followup from the > reporting party. > > Lemme see... > https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ViewProfile.jspa?name=danbri > for examples ... > Ok, I filed https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-804 "Each > page in Mahout's Confluence Wiki has 2 URLs, with differing page > styles and search behaviours" and it's just sat there, and I feel a > bit like it comes over light pointless complaining; probably you all > knew the wiki was a bit messy, and everyone's busy, so it doesn't > really need a JIRA. There are a few other more technical JIRAs I've > either opened or followed and could/should try to be a bit more > disciplined about getting to closure. > > Are there less core pieces of work that can be pushed out to a wider > group, e.g. around documentation? I know managing a pool of > contributors itself takes time,but maybe a few more notes in > https://cwiki.apache.org/MAHOUT/how-to-contribute.html could help > spread the load? > > This query looks useful: > https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&jqlQuery=resolution+%3D+Unresolved+AND+reporter+%3D+currentUser%28%29 > > (... so I've just taken the liberty of adding it into > https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAHOUT/How+To+Contribute ) > > It reminds me I opened these: > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-839 "rowid job failing > (when parsing options)" > ... I submitted a patch but using the wrong APIs; it needs just a > one-liner fix to close. On my "been meaning to..." list. > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-834 "rowsimilarityjob > doesn't clean it's temp dir, and fails when seeing it again" > ... doesn't seem to be agreement on whether this is an issue. I've > been wondering whether to make a patch. > * https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MAHOUT-804 "Each page in > Mahout's Confluence Wiki has 2 URLs, with differing page styles and > search behaviours" ...is me talking to myself. Hard to know how to > help here. > > So I don't want to de-rail discussion into the detail of these > specific JIRAs; but rather to take them as example of what it's like > to be a Mahout user and run into some issue, reported via mail or > JIRA. The way things are framed now sort of sets things up for us to > report a problem and then just wait for "you guys" to do the hard work > of fixing it. Maybe there are some tricks for widening the workforce > without creating a huge coordination and management burden for the > core committers? > > cheers, > > Dan >
