Re: development process

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi Graham,

> Thought experiment: suppose that a complete newcomer posts to the
> email list tomorrow, saying that he was interested in working on
>    bug #5542 cross-staff slur hides text in eps backend
> (I picked randomly).
> 
> Would anybody jump up and say "great!  Let me help you get
> started.  I'll work on this with you!"?  Or would there be silence
> for a few days?
> 
> If you say "I expect that a developer (but not me) would step
> forward and offer to mentor him"... then you would be expected
> extra volunteer effort from developers.

I wouldn’t (and didn’t) say or expect that at all.

What I *am* saying is this: I’d bet good money that if Joe Newcomer** wasn’t 
allowed to even start work on bug #5542 until Capable Developer stepped forward 
and "co-signed" for the patch — effectively guaranteeing it has at least the 
*technical* possibility of making it to the goal line — there’d be a lot fewer 
newbies frustrated when their patches, which they spent many hours coding, 
"dropped off" during the later stages (review, push, etc.) of the process, 
which is what you explicitly pointed out has been a problem in the past.

Cheers,
Kieren.

** Joe Newcomer was the commissioner of "The Gray Cat & The Flounder", an 
evening-length "theatre of music" piece I wrote in 2015. I hope this post ends 
up in future web searches for Joe.  =)

________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden