Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Dave Page
Tom Lane wrote:
 Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
 disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
 give people who work on proposed projects.
 
 Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
 seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
 his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
 rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
 he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
 at that stage.

We cannot necessarily expect the students to work this way without
guidance if they are not familiar with our processes before they start.
The mentors should be there to guide not just with the technical aspects
of the project, but the procedural as well imho.

Regards, Dave

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Magnus Hagander
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:21:42AM +, Dave Page wrote:
 Tom Lane wrote:
  Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
  disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
  give people who work on proposed projects.
  
  Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
  seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
  his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
  rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
  he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
  at that stage.
 
 We cannot necessarily expect the students to work this way without
 guidance if they are not familiar with our processes before they start.
 The mentors should be there to guide not just with the technical aspects
 of the project, but the procedural as well imho.

IIRC, last time we had a pgsql-students (or similar) mailinglist for the
SoC people. That was closed. Perhaps that's a bit counterproductive - it's
better to get introduced to the normal way of doing things right away? 
With the help of the mentor, of course.

//Magnus

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Dave Page
Magnus Hagander wrote:
 On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:21:42AM +, Dave Page wrote:
 Tom Lane wrote:
 Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
 disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
 give people who work on proposed projects.
 Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
 seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
 his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
 rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
 he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
 at that stage.
 We cannot necessarily expect the students to work this way without
 guidance if they are not familiar with our processes before they start.
 The mentors should be there to guide not just with the technical aspects
 of the project, but the procedural as well imho.
 
 IIRC, last time we had a pgsql-students (or similar) mailinglist for the
 SoC people. That was closed. Perhaps that's a bit counterproductive - it's
 better to get introduced to the normal way of doing things right away? 
 With the help of the mentor, of course.

Yes. The other issue though is that initial project proposal scoring and
discussion is done on a private Google site by the mentors. I don't know
if we're allowed to make the proposals public before they get accepted
by Google in case the students copy or improve each others proposals.
From their (and Google's) point of view their proposals are essentially
job applications.

Once they've been ranked, and Google have approved the top-N projects I
guess it's open season!

Regards, Dave

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Magnus Hagander
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:53:41AM +, Dave Page wrote:
 Magnus Hagander wrote:
  On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 09:21:42AM +, Dave Page wrote:
  Tom Lane wrote:
  Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
  disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
  give people who work on proposed projects.
  Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
  seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
  his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
  rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
  he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
  at that stage.
  We cannot necessarily expect the students to work this way without
  guidance if they are not familiar with our processes before they start.
  The mentors should be there to guide not just with the technical aspects
  of the project, but the procedural as well imho.
  
  IIRC, last time we had a pgsql-students (or similar) mailinglist for the
  SoC people. That was closed. Perhaps that's a bit counterproductive - it's
  better to get introduced to the normal way of doing things right away? 
  With the help of the mentor, of course.
 
 Yes. The other issue though is that initial project proposal scoring and
 discussion is done on a private Google site by the mentors. I don't know
 if we're allowed to make the proposals public before they get accepted
 by Google in case the students copy or improve each others proposals.
 From their (and Google's) point of view their proposals are essentially
 job applications.

Right. We'll just have to live by Googles rule for that part, I'm
talking about the discussions later. Once things are approved, they
should all be handled on the standard mailinglists, IMHO.

Being able to make possibly controversial suggestiosn public
beforehand would certainly help, but may not be possible. But aren't we
supposed to pick mentors who will know enough to be able to make that
call themselves?

//Magnus

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Dave Page
Magnus Hagander wrote:
 Right. We'll just have to live by Googles rule for that part, I'm
 talking about the discussions later. Once things are approved, they
 should all be handled on the standard mailinglists, IMHO.

Oh, 100% agreed.

 Being able to make possibly controversial suggestiosn public
 beforehand would certainly help, but may not be possible. But aren't we
 supposed to pick mentors who will know enough to be able to make that
 call themselves?

yeah, in theory, but you know how wildly opinions can vary even amongst
the oldest and most familiar of community members.

Regards, Dave


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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Jim C. Nasby
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 12:47:14AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
 Jim C. Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Yes, but the list being discussed is SoC projects that the community
  would like to see done, which means most people would assume that #1
  isn't an issue.
 
  We need to make sure that every project on the list of SoC ideas is
  supported by the community.
 
 Agreed, except that in most cases a one-liner description of an idea
 isn't enough to get a meaningful reading on whether people think it's
 sane or not.  To take our current example: do you think a one-liner
 description of full disjunctions would have gotten any feedback, except
 for requests for more detail?
 
 I'm not sure how we fix that --- laying out every acceptable project
 in great detail in advance won't happen for lack of manpower, and wouldn't
 be a good idea even if we could do it, because that sounds like a great
 way to stifle creativity.  At the same time we can hardly promise to
 accept every wild-west idea that someone manages to turn into some kind
 of code.  What can we tell the students other than get as much feedback
 as you can, as early as you can?

I agree we certainly don't want to go designing these projects in
advance, but I think we could at least ensure that the community buys
into the concept of each project. ISTM one of the big issues with FD is
that most people didn't even really understand what exactly it was or
how it might be useful, which made getting broad acceptance even harder.

For example, these TODOs seem like they have good acceptance by the
community (though they might not be good SoC projects for other
reasons):
Simplify ability to create partitioned tables
Allow auto-selection of partitioned tables for min/max() operations
Allow commenting of variables in postgresql.conf to restore them to
defaults

Examples of ideas that might not be good because it's unclear that the
community supports them:
Stop-on-a-dime partial vacuum
Adding a replication solution to the backend
Putting time travel support back in

Granted, the 'not good idea' list is pretty exaggerated simply because
it's not as easy to find examples of that on the TODO list, since stuff
on the TODO list is generally supported. Some of the 'temporal database'
items that had been suggested probably fall into the category of 'might
be a good idea, but the community hasn't decided that yet'. So maybe we
should be limiting SoC projects to stuff that's already on the TODO
list..
-- 
Jim Nasby[EMAIL PROTECTED]
EnterpriseDB  http://enterprisedb.com  512.569.9461 (cell)

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Josh Berkus

 Well, the HOT discussion hasn't yet led to an accepted patch ... and I'd
 say its authors still did way too much work before getting the community
 involved.  But certainly it's a better model to look at than what the
 FD author did.

That's pretty much the mentor's job.  I don't remember who mentored FD, but 
obviously there wasn't enough guidance.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Robert Treat
On Monday 26 February 2007 18:46, Josh Berkus wrote:
 Demian,

  Could you also please share your thoughts on what would be a good
  student profile- for instance, how much theoretical background and
  practical experience, for working on a SoC project?

 Well, it shouldn't be the student's first year writing code.  Basically,
 they're committing to developing a feature *to completion* in 3 months.
 We're going to be evaluating  proposals based on whether we think students
 can do that.

 References of some kind will be important, given that we'll only be
 accepting about 12% of proposals.  So, some demonstration of the student's
 ability to code from either the open source world or previous coursework.

 I don't know, honestly, that we care very much about theoretical
 background, except where it relates directly to and cutting-edge concepts
 in you proposal.  PostgreSQL-space is littered with half-completed
 academic projects; we're not seeking more of those.

Additionally it doesn't hurt to bring up an idea to the community before you 
even submit the application.  If you get buy in / agreement from multiple 
community members on a project now, it can only help your chances in the SoC 
process. (Picking items from the TODO list is a good way to start if you need 
ideas)

-- 
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Andrew Dunstan

Jim C. Nasby wrote:


I agree we certainly don't want to go designing these projects in
advance, but I think we could at least ensure that the community buys
into the concept of each project. 


Yes, at least for those that go on a suggestion list. And that was my 
worry about Warren's suggestion - I haven't seen much enthusiasm for it 
from anyone else, so the degree of in-principle buyin is fairly dubious.


cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Martijn van Oosterhout
On Tue, Feb 27, 2007 at 10:49:18AM -0600, Jim C. Nasby wrote:
 I agree we certainly don't want to go designing these projects in
 advance, but I think we could at least ensure that the community buys
 into the concept of each project. ISTM one of the big issues with FD is
 that most people didn't even really understand what exactly it was or
 how it might be useful, which made getting broad acceptance even harder.

I think it might be useful to at least encourage people wanting to an
SoC project to create page on the developer wiki selling their idea.
You know, questions like: why do we want it? Where do you expect it to
be included? etc.

That might help catch misunderstandings much earlier.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout   kleptog@svana.org   http://svana.org/kleptog/
 From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to 
 litigate.


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Description: Digital signature


Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-27 Thread Peter Eisentraut
Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
 I think it might be useful to at least encourage people wanting to an
 SoC project to create page on the developer wiki selling their idea.
 You know, questions like: why do we want it? Where do you expect it
 to be included? etc.

They are expected to do as much when they apply for a project at the 
Google site.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Andrew Dunstan

Josh Berkus wrote:

The next Summer of Code is just around the corner.

Last year, we had 46 submissions and seven we accepted.  Out of the SoC we got 
two ongoing contributors, several good patches, two code refactors and even 
an employee for a PostgreSQL company.  I'd like to see us do the same this 
year!


Therefore, we need volunteer mentors.  Here's how it works:

-- You help review and rate submissions in March.
-- From May-August, you mentor one or two SoC students in working on 
PostgreSQL patches.  This means that you must be readily available to your 
student(s) during this summer and have time (2-5 hours per week, more at the 
beginning) to coach them.
-- You need to evaluate the student's progress both midsummer and on 
completion.
-- You prepare the student code for submission as an 8.4 feature, if 
applicable.
-- Around October, Google gives SPI $500 for your mentoring.  You can choose 
to take this money (less transaction fees) or leave it as a donation.  You 
also get a nifty t-shirt.


We're looking for mentors who are:
-- patient
-- available
-- knowledgeable in depth in some particular area/add-in to PostgreSQL
-- interested in reviewing student code
-- interested in helping create the next generation of contributors

Particularly we'd like people who can mentor on:
-- PostgreSQL internals
-- GIS
-- applications  client tools
-- advanced indexing
-- XML
... based on last year's submissions, but there will be more this year.

Also, I am looking for contacts at universities where I can direct notices 
when SoC opens.


E-mail me ASAP.

  


Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?

cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Josh Berkus
Andrew,

 Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?

Suggest away, please!

I'm going to update the website soon, would appreciate new content.

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread markwkm

On 2/26/07, Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Josh Berkus wrote:
 The next Summer of Code is just around the corner.

 Last year, we had 46 submissions and seven we accepted.  Out of the SoC we got
 two ongoing contributors, several good patches, two code refactors and even
 an employee for a PostgreSQL company.  I'd like to see us do the same this
 year!

 Therefore, we need volunteer mentors.  Here's how it works:

 -- You help review and rate submissions in March.
 -- From May-August, you mentor one or two SoC students in working on
 PostgreSQL patches.  This means that you must be readily available to your
 student(s) during this summer and have time (2-5 hours per week, more at the
 beginning) to coach them.
 -- You need to evaluate the student's progress both midsummer and on
 completion.
 -- You prepare the student code for submission as an 8.4 feature, if
 applicable.
 -- Around October, Google gives SPI $500 for your mentoring.  You can choose
 to take this money (less transaction fees) or leave it as a donation.  You
 also get a nifty t-shirt.

 We're looking for mentors who are:
   -- patient
   -- available
   -- knowledgeable in depth in some particular area/add-in to PostgreSQL
   -- interested in reviewing student code
   -- interested in helping create the next generation of contributors

 Particularly we'd like people who can mentor on:
   -- PostgreSQL internals
   -- GIS
   -- applications  client tools
   -- advanced indexing
   -- XML
   ... based on last year's submissions, but there will be more this year.

 Also, I am looking for contacts at universities where I can direct notices
 when SoC opens.

 E-mail me ASAP.



Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?


I'd like to suggest working on a patch testing tool that was discussed
previously. :)

Regards,
Mark

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Andrew Dunstan

Josh Berkus wrote:

Andrew,

  

Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?



Suggest away, please!

I'm going to update the website soon, would appreciate new content.

  


here are a few ideas to be going on with (none of these are new):

buildfarm:

1. Buildfarm web app: is in urgent need of renovation.  (perl + postgres 
+ template toolkit. might be nice to rework it as a Catalyst app).
2. Buildfarm client: support downloading patches from an approved 
server, doing apply, build, install, and test. (perl + maybe SOAP)
3. Buildfarm client + web app: support running performance tests and 
reporting on them (start with pgbench) (s/w as above)




postgres core:

4. allow use of LIKE syntax in all type expressions e.g. select * from 
mysrf() as (label text, like foo); create type xx as (label text, like bar);



cheers

andrew





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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread markwkm

On 2/26/07, Josh Berkus josh@agliodbs.com wrote:

Andrew,

 Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?

Suggest away, please!

I'm going to update the website soon, would appreciate new content.


I can also volunteer to mentor continuing work on a TPC-E kit, for C
stored procedures and improved results reporting.

Mark

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Warren Turkal
On Monday 26 February 2007 14:22, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
 Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?

Temporal database support
* base data types
  - verify current for ISO compliance (timestamp, interval)
  - implement period datatype
* operators for those datatypes
* add support for valid time tables
* add support for transaction time tables
* add support for bi-temporal tables

Check out [1] for more info.

[1]http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~rts/

wt
-- 
Warren Turkal (w00t)

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Andrew Dunstan

Warren Turkal wrote:

On Monday 26 February 2007 14:22, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
  

Is there a list of projects? Or can we suggest some?



Temporal database support
* base data types
  - verify current for ISO compliance (timestamp, interval)
  - implement period datatype
* operators for those datatypes
* add support for valid time tables
* add support for transaction time tables
* add support for bi-temporal tables

  



Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
give people who work on proposed projects. I understand Warren's 
keenness for this, but it's not clear to me that it has lots of support 
elsewhere, and IIRC the idea was rejected by the SQL Standards body. I 
don't object to making new data types available, but new table 
properties is quite another matter.


So, what exactly are we promising?

cheers

andrew

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Demian Lessa
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1


Could you also please share your thoughts on what would be a good
student profile- for instance, how much theoretical background and
practical experience, for working on a SoC project?

Demian

 The next Summer of Code is just around the corner.
 
 Last year, we had 46 submissions and seven we accepted.  Out of the SoC we 
 got 
 two ongoing contributors, several good patches, two code refactors and even 
 an employee for a PostgreSQL company.  I'd like to see us do the same this 
 year!
 
 Therefore, we need volunteer mentors.  Here's how it works:
 
 -- You help review and rate submissions in March.
 -- From May-August, you mentor one or two SoC students in working on 
 PostgreSQL patches.  This means that you must be readily available to your 
 student(s) during this summer and have time (2-5 hours per week, more at the 
 beginning) to coach them.
 -- You need to evaluate the student's progress both midsummer and on 
 completion.
 -- You prepare the student code for submission as an 8.4 feature, if 
 applicable.
 -- Around October, Google gives SPI $500 for your mentoring.  You can choose 
 to take this money (less transaction fees) or leave it as a donation.  You 
 also get a nifty t-shirt.
 
 We're looking for mentors who are:
   -- patient
   -- available
   -- knowledgeable in depth in some particular area/add-in to PostgreSQL
   -- interested in reviewing student code
   -- interested in helping create the next generation of contributors
 
 Particularly we'd like people who can mentor on:
   -- PostgreSQL internals
   -- GIS
   -- applications  client tools
   -- advanced indexing
   -- XML
   ... based on last year's submissions, but there will be more this year.
 
 Also, I am looking for contacts at universities where I can direct notices 
 when SoC opens.
 
 E-mail me ASAP.
 

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Josh Berkus
Demian,

 Could you also please share your thoughts on what would be a good
 student profile- for instance, how much theoretical background and
 practical experience, for working on a SoC project?

Well, it shouldn't be the student's first year writing code.  Basically, 
they're committing to developing a feature *to completion* in 3 months.  
We're going to be evaluating  proposals based on whether we think students 
can do that.

References of some kind will be important, given that we'll only be 
accepting about 12% of proposals.  So, some demonstration of the student's 
ability to code from either the open source world or previous coursework.

I don't know, honestly, that we care very much about theoretical 
background, except where it relates directly to and cutting-edge concepts 
in you proposal.  PostgreSQL-space is littered with half-completed 
academic projects; we're not seeking more of those.  

-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL @ Sun
San Francisco

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Tom Lane
Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
 disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
 give people who work on proposed projects.

Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
at that stage.

I think the main problems with the FD patch were (1) much of the
community was never actually sold on it being a useful feature,
and (2) the implementation was not something anyone wanted to accept
into core, because of its klugy API.  Both of these points could have
been dealt with before a line of code had been written, but they were
not :-(

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Joshua D. Drake
Tom Lane wrote:
 Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
 disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
 give people who work on proposed projects.
 
 Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
 seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
 his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
 rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
 he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
 at that stage.

Tom,

Correct me if I am wrong, but would the way that HOT has been handled be
a good way for the SoC people to do things?

Joshua D. Drake


 
 I think the main problems with the FD patch were (1) much of the
 community was never actually sold on it being a useful feature,
 and (2) the implementation was not something anyone wanted to accept
 into core, because of its klugy API.  Both of these points could have
 been dealt with before a line of code had been written, but they were
 not :-(
 
   regards, tom lane
 
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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Tom Lane
Joshua D. Drake [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Correct me if I am wrong, but would the way that HOT has been handled be
 a good way for the SoC people to do things?

Well, the HOT discussion hasn't yet led to an accepted patch ... and I'd
say its authors still did way too much work before getting the community
involved.  But certainly it's a better model to look at than what the
FD author did.

regards, tom lane

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Jim C. Nasby
On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 09:10:38PM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
 Andrew Dunstan [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
  Well, here's a question. Given the recent discussion re full 
  disjunction, I'd like to know what sort of commitment we are going to 
  give people who work on proposed projects.
 
 Um, if you mean are we going to promise to accept a patch in advance of
 seeing it, the answer is certainly not.  Still, a SoC author can improve
 his chances in all the usual ways, primarily by getting discussion and
 rough consensus on a spec and then on an implementation sketch before
 he starts to do much code.  Lots of showstopper problems can be caught
 at that stage.
 
 I think the main problems with the FD patch were (1) much of the
 community was never actually sold on it being a useful feature,
 and (2) the implementation was not something anyone wanted to accept
 into core, because of its klugy API.  Both of these points could have
 been dealt with before a line of code had been written, but they were
 not :-(

Yes, but the list being discussed is SoC projects that the community
would like to see done, which means most people would assume that #1
isn't an issue.

We need to make sure that every project on the list of SoC ideas is
supported by the community.
-- 
Jim Nasby[EMAIL PROTECTED]
EnterpriseDB  http://enterprisedb.com  512.569.9461 (cell)

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Re: [HACKERS] Seeking Google SoC Mentors

2007-02-26 Thread Tom Lane
Jim C. Nasby [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
 Yes, but the list being discussed is SoC projects that the community
 would like to see done, which means most people would assume that #1
 isn't an issue.

 We need to make sure that every project on the list of SoC ideas is
 supported by the community.

Agreed, except that in most cases a one-liner description of an idea
isn't enough to get a meaningful reading on whether people think it's
sane or not.  To take our current example: do you think a one-liner
description of full disjunctions would have gotten any feedback, except
for requests for more detail?

I'm not sure how we fix that --- laying out every acceptable project
in great detail in advance won't happen for lack of manpower, and wouldn't
be a good idea even if we could do it, because that sounds like a great
way to stifle creativity.  At the same time we can hardly promise to
accept every wild-west idea that someone manages to turn into some kind
of code.  What can we tell the students other than get as much feedback
as you can, as early as you can?

regards, tom lane

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