[Geany-devel] Patch Tracker

[Thomas Martitz]

Am 10.06.2011 02:09, schrieb Matthew Brush:
> On 06/09/11 10:40, Thomas Martitz wrote:
>> Am 27.05.2011 23:31, schrieb Matthew Brush:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> Would it be useful for someone with admin rights on SourceForge.net to
>>> create a "Patch Tracker"? I've seen some projects with this[1].
>>
>> We, at Rockbox, are in the process of abandoning our patch tracker.
>> Because it has grown to host over 400 patches, nice ones as well as bad
>> ones, which nobody looks at.
>>
>> We made the following observation after years with a patch tracker. If
>> core developers are rare or lack time or can't otherwise regularly look
>> at the patches (which is the case for Geany too), it will become a place
>> to let patches rot.
>> The problem is that a patch tracker creates the idea that once a patch
>> is uploaded the project is responsible for them and not the contributor.
>> This means the contributor is less motivated to work on the patch to
>> make it committable or to pester developers.
>>
>> The way I see it is that a patch tracker will not work for Geany.
>
> So it's better to let them rot in the (non-searchable) archives of a 
> mailing list? 

No it's not (in our experience anyway), since the possibility of getting 
lost in the mailing list motivates the contributors to regularly bring 
up the patches again and remind core developers. This doesn't happen on 
a patch tracker, but is happening right now on the mailing list.

> It's at least a bit better than the current situation, since it's 
> easier for a core developer to see a list of outstanding patches in 
> one page, and people down the road can see the patches and update them 
> to work with newer versions later if they get forgotten.

Unless the patch tracker lives long enough to grow to a couple (say 50) 
patches in which case patches not clearly represented anymore and it's 
de-motivating to even look at the patch tracker, let alone individual 
patches.

>
> Of course, like you said, if nobody looks at it ever, it's still 
> pretty useless.

Additionally, if the contributor is not motivated enough to bring up 
patches again and again then neither the maling list or patch tracker 
help. In this case it's simply the contributors fault.

Best regards.