Re: postponing some large patches to 9.2 - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Tue, Feb 08, 2011 at 02:04:04PM -0500, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 1:02 PM, David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
> > Given how things worked, i.e. that people were not clear that 9.1
> > development had actually started, etc., I am again proposing that we
> > have one more CF starting March 15 to get this all cleaned up.  Yes, I
> > know that wasn't the plan, but I also know that we're really, really
> > close on a whole bunch of things, some of which have been in the
> > offing for years at this point, and we risk giving people the
> > impression, if they don't already have it, that if they're not in the
> > "inner circle," their patches get lower priority no matter what their
> > merits.
> 
> I agree that we have some problems in that area - particularly with
> writeable CTEs - but prolonging the schedule isn't going to fix that
> problem.

What is?

> I don't think that's entirely fair to people who planned their work
> over the last eight months so that their patches would be committed
> before the deadline.  I both worked hard to make sure the stuff I
> cared most about got committed in time, and passed over projects that
> I could not get done in time, even though I *could* have gotten them
> done given another two months.  I realize there are all sorts of good
> reasons why people didn't get things done on time, like, say, the need
> to earn a living - but having a time frame and sticking with it is
> ultimately better for the project, at least in my opinion.  If we have
> to slip the end of the CommitFest a little to get a few extra things
> in, OK, but adding another two months to the development schedule
> that's been published for most of a year is a pretty drastic change.

This development cycle was a change from other development cycles in
that it "began" before development had closed in the previous cycle.
I will not take a position at the moment as to the wisdom of making
this change, but it's been clear from feedback from lots of
developers, even ones who'd be expected to be "in the know," that this
vital piece of information did not gotten out in time.

Let's assume for the moment that we're going with overlapping
development cycles into the future.  I'd submit that given the
propagation delay of this change, the schedule for the first iteration
of this never was reasonable, and "slipping" two months is a small
price to pay for the huge flock of things we're epsilon short of
getting.

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
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