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On Jun 12, 2008, at 11:41 PM, Guido van Rossum wrote:
My colleague and SVN developer Ben Sussman-Collins occasionally blogs
about the social side of (mostly open source) software development. He
just posted a new one that struck a chord:
http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=96
The story's main moral: submit your code for review early and often;
work in a branch if you need to, but don't hide your code from review
in a local repository until it's "perfect".
Let's all remember this and make sure not to drop "code bombs" on each
other. :-)
Very interesting article. I'm short on time and don't want to rant
(though I likely will ;), but I whole-heartedly agree with the moral
of the story!
I disagree with some of the details though. I actually think that a
dvcs is /better/ suited to transparency, when used right, and when
coupled with a public open code hosting facility. Sure, a lot depends
on social engineering, and I agree with Ben that the tools make a
difference, I just think that a good dvcs solves more problems than it
creates.
Also, there are a few things we do at my job that I think contribute
significantly and positively to our productivity, quality and sense of
shared community code. Briefly:
* pre-implementation "calls" - you do not start hacking code until
you've discussed your design or approach with at least one other
person, either over the phone or on irc (preferably the former). Yes,
there are exceptions but they are discouraged. This means that when
you actually sit in front of your editor, you have a much better idea
of what you are trying to accomplish.
* small branches - we have a strict limit on diffs no greater than 800
lines. Yes we have exceptions, but they are rare and pre-arranged.
Having such a strict limit really forces you to be disciplined,
organized and very effectively diffuses code bombs.
* everyone can see (lots of) everyone else's code - this is great
because everyone needs some advice or guidance along the way. If you
get stuck, you can push a branch and I can pull it and look at it, run
it, test it, even modify it and push my own branch for you to see.
This is /much/ more effective than trading patches, and I don't see
how this could even work without a dvcs.
* nothing lands without being reviewed - this is a hard and fast rule,
no exceptions. Someone else has to review your code, and most
developers are also reviewers (we have a mentoring program to train
new reviewers). You get over the fear pretty quickly, and learn /a
lot/ both by reviewing and getting reviewed. Coding standards emerge,
best practices are established, and overall team productivity goes way
up. Small branches are critical to this process, as is our goal of
reviewing every branch within 24 hours of its submission.
* nothing lands without passing all tests - speaking from experience,
this is the one thing I wish Python would adopt! This means the trunk
is /always/ releasable and stable. The trade-off is that it can take
quite a while for your branch to land once it's been approved, since
this process is serialized and is dependent on full test suite
execution time. Python's challenge here is that what passes on one
platform does not necessarily pass on another. Still, if this week is
any indication, passing on /any/ platform would be nice. ;)
I'm not saying Python can or should adopt these guidelines. An open
source volunteer project is different than a corporate environment,
even if the latter is very open-source-y. But it is worthwhile to
continually evaluate and improve the process because over time, you
definitely improve efficiency in ways that are happily adopted by the
majority of the community.
- -Barry
P.S. I can't leave this without one little plug. Some folks really
like the model that a non-dvcs imposes on development, others thrive
on the freedom a dvcs gives you. Bazaar is flexible enough to support
both models, even at the same time. It's not either-or.
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