John,
One thing that would help w/ a rapid delivery/response cycle would be more
comprehensive tests. They would let other developers try out various ideas
and see what breaks before you release it.
We’ve implemented an automated approach where we run an MPL script using Agg,
save the output image and then compare it against a “good” image that someone
looked at. We use PIL to do the compare and if it’s close (that’s the hard
part), then the test passes. If it’s not, someone looks at the two images to
see if the difference is benign. Something similar to this could be done (if
you’re not already) for the MPL examples to make sure that changes don’t cause
plotting problems in other areas.
Having this kind of system is also a great driver for people to expand it. For
example – we really care about unit processing support everywhere. Every once
in awhile, we find a change that someone submits that breaks unit support. So
once of the tasks we‘re going to work on next year is to build a set of
automated test cases that try and hit every plot function with units which can
then run on every release. If there were a simple to use MPL standard test
system like this, other people might contribute more tests as a way of insuring
that the things they care about stay working through various changes.
It would also be nice to have a test system for unit testing of components. A
lot of the code that does different transformations, symbol and color mapping,
etc etc could be unit tested without the need for actually drawing anything.
If there was a standard location, style, and system, people could slowly add to
the tests over time. You can also consider requiring some level of unit test
for newly submitted code where ever it’s possible.
Just some thoughts…
Ted
From: John Hunter [mailto:jdh2...@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 8:10 PM
To: Darren Dale
Cc: matplotlib-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [matplotlib-devel] requesting permission to remove traits and
configobj
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:20 PM, Darren Dale
<dsdal...@gmail.com<mailto:dsdal...@gmail.com>> wrote:
There has been a report at the bugtracker complaining that matplotlib is
overwriting an existing installation of configobj. I had a look at the code and
thought the bug report must be a mistake or windows specific, but I just saw
similar behavior on my linux system.
Ignoring for a minute the question of whether we can/should flush
configobj/traits, it sounds like the real problem is that setup.cfg is not
working like we expect it to. And that is something that should be fixed if is
broken. If mpl is installing configobj or traits even if we are telling it not
to via setup.cfg, then we have a problem. This is worth knowing, since the
last mpl release was broken vis-a-vis the default backend on win32, which
*could* be explained by a broken setup.cfg.
I would like to simply remove configobj and traits from our repository. They
are only used by the long-neglected experimental traited config package, which
is only of interest to developers who can easily install them as external
dependencies. Is it ok to remove them? If so, should it be done on all the
branches?
How long are we going to continue to maintain the different branches? It was so
much easier back when we only had to worry about the trunk...
You can remove them from the trunk. They should remain on the 0.91 branch as
is (with any known bugs fixed and merged) since that is the point of the branch
(stability for those who cannot upgrade -- in principle someone might be
depending on the traited config, in practice unlikely). As for the 0.98
branch, it is slated for destruction so no worries. I share your visceral
reaction against branches, but my head is starting to override this bodily
reaction, as I see the need for them in practice. If we carefully document the
best practices and motivations in the developerr's guide, we can use them
advantageously.
We have a lot of people contributing to mpl, and approaching or just after
release time we need some mechanism for stabilizing the tested feature set of
the release candidate while allowing other development to proceed, and branches
are the natural mechanism for that. That we are starting to use them is a
reflection of the fact that we have many more active developers than we ever
had before (12 developers contributed between 98.3 and 98.4, it used to be just
3 or 4 at a time). I wouldn't be advocating branches otherwise, because I am
an advocate of doing things as simply as possible: "Make everything as simple
as possible, but not simpler.".
In general, I am in favor of the wildest, wooliest, development process we can
afford. I would like to have everyone on the trunk, making releases as often
as possible (nightly if we can), with an attitude of "if you break it, just fix
it an rerelease it". This model worked fine for us for years, and I think it
would continue to work if we have a hyper-active developer or an automated
build bot. In the old days, I would release any time I added a new feaure, and
if I broke something I would have a new release out in hours. I no longer have
the time for that, and we are lucky to have Charlie buildng OS X and win32
binaties and eggs for multiple python versions. When we release broken code,
Charlie has to go through the entire test/upload/release cycle again, building
for multiple OSs and python versions while taking care of his wife and two
babies, so we want to minimize that. At the same time, we have lots of
developers pushing code into the mainline. We need some mechanism of balancing
the desire of developers to get new code in and the need for the packagers and
release manangers to get stable code out.
I think the right balance for mpl before a release is to test the HEAD, sign
off on it, branch it, let development proceed on the HEAD, and put any release
critical bugs and fixes into the branch. When the next release comes up,
delete the old branch, and wash-rinse-repeat. We will have in perpetuity one
active release branch at a time, which gets important bug fixes and nothing
else, and in addition (for a while) a legacy branch (0.91) which is updated
once a month or so. I am happy to get input on this.
JDH
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