Re: Skytools committed without hackers discussion/review

On 10/10/07, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Oct 2007 18:35:52 -0500
> Michael Glaesemann <grzm(at)seespotcode(dot)net> wrote:
> > On Oct 9, 2007, at 0:06 , Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > > I am surprised we are not backing
> > > out the patch and requiring that the patch go through the formal
> > > review
> > > process.
> >
> > I have no opinion as to the patch itself (other than the fact that
> > it's a not bug fix), but I think this patch should be reverted
> > because it's (a) after feature freeze, (b) had no discussion on
> > hackers (or patches), (c) is not a bug fix. IMO rules can be bent
> > but there should always at least be discussion before a new feature
> > is committed after feature freeze and definitely after beta.
> > Otherwise, the rule appears to be if you can get it in somehow, it's
> > in.
>
> I think this almost says it all. My particular gripe about this whole
> thing is that there are other features that are not too intrusive (or
> appear so anyway) that are easily more useful that are not being
> considered at all. Namely,
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-patches/2007-10/msg00087.php . It
> makes the whole process seem tilted and subjective.
>
> IMO, the patch is reverted, and submitted for 8.4 or pgfoundry.

Yes, reverting is an option, but please, do that at least with
an understanding what actually happened. Current discussion
seems to give picture that Jan committed some private piece of
code without consulting anybody which was not the case.

It was actually my patch that was reviewed by 2 senior PostgreSQL
developers: Jan and Tom, then later committed by Jan. I don't
think the fact that Jan was an interested party by being Slony
developer invalidates his status as PostgreSQL developer.

Obviously that does not make skipping -hackers less mistake,
but there was no evil from anybody and the "process" for such
exceptional case was _mostly_ followed.

Now the skipping -hackers part - that was also my mistake,
I should have Cc-d the design and code review discussion here
also. I just saw the contrib-acceptance as minor question,
the main issue was whether Slony was prepared to such a major
rewrite of its core parts on such short notice, so I wanted
to sync with them first.

Also I think several people are annoyed by the "Jan asked permission
from -core" part of the process. But I think if you replace the
-core with "release manager" it will become more understandable.
The fact is there are only few people responsible for releases and
non-technical decisions need to be made by them. And yes, it should
have been accompanied by technical review in -hackers.

--
marko