From: Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>
Message-Id: <200609020036.k820aWr26205@momjian.us>
Subject: Re: Getting a move on for 8.2 beta
In-Reply-To: <200609020209.36483.peter_e@gmx.net>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 20:36:32 -0400 (EDT)
CC: pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>,
	josh@agliodbs.com
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Peter Eisentraut wrote:
> Tom Lane wrote:
> > Well, no, it's not.  We have told people till we're blue in the face
> > "post early, post often".  Now I will plead guilty to not always
> > having spent as much time giving feedback on draft patches as I
> > should've, but the process is pretty clear.  As I see it the main
> > problem is people undertaking patches off in corners somewhere rather
> > than discussing their work on the mailing lists while they do it.
> 
> Again, process support.  If all we can offer people is to post 
> multi-megabyte patches to the mailing list every month, that totally 
> doesn't help.  We'd need ways to track the progress on these things: 
> what was the specification for that patch, where was the discussion on 
> it, what has changed in the patch since the last time, since the time 
> before last time, what is left to be done, who has worked on it, etc.  
> Figuring out the answer to those questions from a mailing list archive 
> is tedious to the point that no one wants to do it.

Uh, Tom has been tracking Gavin on the bitmap patch every week for
weeks, and I pummelled EnterpriseDB/Jonah over the recursive query
patch.  Neither effort was very fruitful, but tracking wasn't what made
them fail.  I am not saying tracking is wrong, but rather tracking would
not have helped make these things happen faster.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian   bruce@momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB    http://www.enterprisedb.com

  + If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +