> > We all want more testing. I see two options: > > > (1) Change lots of other people's behavior. > > (2) Set up a large-scale automated build farm. > > > Though we have neither right now, I see (2) happening before (1). > ... > If I don't either > > (a) get much more money in grants, > (b) have more volunteers willing to do (2) and (1), or > (c) start a company and sell Sage binaries that are more polished, > > then indeed Sage releases will likely never be as polished as > Mathematica, or even RedHat releases.
Sage does have now the policy of 100% doctests, patch review system and detailed guidelines for reviewers (thanks to Minh!). How can waiting for build confirmations be more difficult? How about, say, such a policy: - release candidate is made - if there are no blockers/build problems reported for it during one WEEK (instead of like 24 hours), it is completely released - if there are things that must be fixed, they get fixed and the one week timer is reset - meanwhile, this release candidate can be used as a base for the NEXT release, making sure that all the new blockers also get merged Even if not all platforms will get checked, most of them probably will be, at least more than in one day. Is it actually more work for the release managers to do this?.. No, I don't volunteer to be a release manager who does this, but if there are mandatory policies for patch writers and reviewers, why should not there be policies for release managers? By the way, while it is possible to make a patch/package for Sage in 3 minutes, http://sagemath.org/doc/developer/walk_through.html#creating-a-change states "Once you have something you like, do everything suggested for reviewing a patch." and http://sagemath.org/doc/developer/walk_through.html#reviewing-a-patch states "If affected files pass tests, then run ./sage -testall. This will take a while to complete. No, it is not optional. " so I don't think that it is possible to follow standard policies and make something which is "ready to merge" so fast... Perhaps in this case it was reasonable to make an exception, but I also understand how David can have enough time to write a long email, but not enough to post a patch. I definitely prefer Sage over Maple, which I used for a while, and from my little experience with other "M"s I also think that Sage has a lot of advantages. I also think that Sage has a lot of advantages compared to some other free/open-source math programs. So - I think that Sage is great and I intend to continue using it indefinitely. However more than once I regretted "sage -upgrade" because it broke something that I was using and had to use it again right then. I also had several occasions of "live Sage introductions" when I had to say "Usually, you can do this cool thing: ... , but unfortunately now it is broken and probably will be fixed in the next release." It would be really nice not to say it often. Thank you, Andrey -- To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
