Re: Additional options for Sync Replication

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Dimitri Fontaine
> <dimitri(at)2ndquadrant(dot)fr> wrote:
>> So the rules are not the same for commiter patches and contributor
>> patches, and there's no good in trying to have them the same or
>> pretending they are.  In particular, only commiters are able to finish
>> and polish the work between the last commit fest and beta, and then they
>> will be on the hook to get to release candidate and release.
>>
>> But you know all that better than I do.
>
> Committers can and do get away with slipping things in later than
> non-committers, and to some extent that's OK for the reasons you
> mention.  But Alvaro was very gracious in conceding that it was a bit
> too late to push in his key lock patch, as was his employer, JD.  They
> didn't like it, but they accepted that it was necessary to move the
> community, overall, forward, and to avoid a really long beta period
> during which, really, nobody gets to do anything at all interesting.
> We cannot have one standard for features that CommandPrompt really
> wants committed and a different standard for features that 2ndQuadrant
> or, say, EnterpriseDB, really want committed.
>
> I completely disagree that committers are the only ones who can finish
> and polish work between the last CommiFest and beta.  Fujii Masao,
> Kevin Grittner, Yeb Havinga, and Yamamoto Takashi all come to mind as
> people who have been very, very helpful in moving us toward beta
> through careful testing and code review.  I have no fear at all about
> our ability to maintain SSI even though there is not one committer who
> fully understands it all, because every bug report that comes in gets
> a response within hours and a patch within days.  The limiting factor
> there has actually been how long it's taken someone to look and test
> those patches, not how quickly they've been produced.  I think the
> reality is exactly the other way around: committers are not the people
> who get the opportunity to fix other people's bugs; they are the
> people who are *expected* to fix other people's bugs when no one else
> will.  If it's your perception that the (mostly quite minor) changes
> that I've made to sync rep are somehow for purposes of
> self-aggrandizement or a desire to micromanage everything that happens
> in the backend, then I'm sorry for that.  I'll readily admit that I
> have strong opinions on lots of topics, especially but not only
> PostgreSQL-related topics; but I would be way happier to have spent
> the last couple of weeks developing new features than swatting bugs.
> Had I done that, though, I think that not as many bugs would have
> gotten swatted.  So I did it.  Whether that makes me a helpful
> community guy who tries to ensure a quality release or a total jerk
> who interjects his nose into other people's business is, of course, a
> matter of opinion.
>
> Even today, anyone who would like to write a patch to address more
> than one of the open items is more than welcome to do so, and I would
> really appreciate it, even I or someone else ends up having to adjust
> it a bit before committing.  There are at least three issues on the
> open items list that are obvious candidates for someone to pick up:
>
> - fix attinhcount tracking
> - Typed-tables patch broke pg_upgrade
> - comments on SQL/MED objects
>
> I volunteered to pick up the last one, but I'd be more than happy if
> the person who reported the problem had already provided the patch.
> Or if someone else wanted to write the patch.  That would be awesome.
> In my view, the question we should be asking ourselves here is not -
> why are Tom and Robert getting to make all these commits? - but -
> where is everybody else who should be helping out?  If the answer is
> "well we don't have time to work on this because we all have day jobs
> we have to do to get paid", then I accept that.  But that moves
> getting to commit changes at a late date from the "privilege" bucket
> into the "responsibility" bucket.

Robert,

Everybody wants us to be polite and respectful with each other.

Writing such long emails seems to be just filibustering to me. I doubt
anyone has read and considered every word, there are just too many. A
form of disrespect.

Main thing I note is that you could have reviewed my patch in the time
its taken to discuss these procedural "issues". Why are they more
important?

--
 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services