Antoine Pitrou wrote:
Le jeudi 19 janvier 2012 à 00:25 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull a écrit :
> You claim people won't use stable releases because of not enough
> alphas? That sounds completely unrelated.
Surely testing is related to user perceptions of stability. More
testing helps reduce bugs in released software, which improves user
perception of stability, encouraging them to use the software in
production.
I have asked a practical question, a theoretical answer isn't exactly
what I was waiting for.
[...]
I don't care to convince *you*, since you are not involved in Python
development and release management (you haven't ever been a contributor
AFAIK). Unless you produce practical arguments, saying "I don't think
you can do it" is plain FUD and certainly not worth answering to.
Pardon me, but people like Stephen Turnbull are *users* of Python, exactly the
sort of people you DO have to convince that moving to an accelerated or more
complex release process will result in a better product. The risk is that you
will lose users, or fragment the user base even more than it is now with 2.x
vs 3.x.
Quite frankly, I like the simplicity and speed of the current release cycle.
All this talk about separate LTS releases and parallel language releases and
library releases makes my head spin. I fear the day that people asking
questions on the tutor or python-list mailing lists will have to say (e.g.)
"I'm using Python 3.4.1 and standard library 1.2.7" in order to specify the
version they're using.
I fear change, because the current system works well and for every way to make
it better there are a thousand ways to make it worse. Dismissing fears like
this as FUD doesn't do anyone any favours.
One on-going complaint is that Python-Dev doesn't have the manpower or time to
do everything that needs to be done. Bugs languish for months or years because
nobody has the time to look at it. Will going to a more rapid release cycle
give people more time, or just increase their workload? You're hoping that a
more rapid release cycle will attract more developers, and there is a chance
that you could be right; but a more rapid release cycle WILL increase the
total work load. So you're betting that this change will attract enough new
developers that the work load per person will decrease even as the total work
load increases. I don't think that's a safe bet.
--
Steven
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