Pruning the TODO list

On 15 June 2012 03:10, Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Amit Kapila <amit(dot)kapila(at)huawei(dot)com> wrote:

>> I am planning to work on the below Todo list item...
...
>> Suggest me if my understanding is correct?
>
> I guess my first question is: why do we need this?  There are lots of
> things in the TODO list that someone wanted once upon a time, but
> they're not all actually important.  Do you have reason to believe
> that this one is?  It's been six years since that email, so it's worth
> asking if this is actually relevant.

The current TODO list is close to worthless and needs substantial
pruning or even complete truncation. Or massive redesign.

The above shows a recent attempt to fix one of the items on the TODO
list, which many people have then spent time questioning. That is just
a waste of time for *all* concerned.

I see many items on there that have been there for eight years and longer.

The situation is now so bad that many experienced developers ignore
the list completely. Robert's answer is the final nail in that coffin;
I agree with him.

ISTM that we should prune the list right down to nothing, or very,
very few entries. We must have a TODO list that we can trust to save
us time. I don't want to see any more people waste their time on
issues that aren't really wanted. At the moment we have lots of false
positives and so waste time and bring the TODO list into disrepute. It
would be better to have a compact list where every item was reasonably
accepted, so we can begin to trust it again. Trusting the TODO list is
what brought me my first patch, and I think it could and should be the
same with others.

Can Tom go through the list and archive items no longer considered
likely to fly? A simple triage is all that is needed here. Or would
you like me or another to do this?

--
 Simon Riggs                   http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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