IPython development: course adjustment required
Fernando Perez <fperez.net <at> gmail.com>
2008-06-01 02:56:11 GMT
[ Folks: this message was sent to ipython-dev, where the bulk of the
discussion is likely to take place. But I want to make sure all
users see it, and everyone's comments are welcome]
Hi all,
after much thought and hand-wringing, Brian and I would like to bring
up an idea for a change of plans in the development process that will
hopefully make us all happier, more efficient, and will lead to more
usable code sooner, which is after all what we want. Please pitch in
with any comments you may have, ideas, dissent, etc.
The current ipython development process is, we think, far less
efficient than it could be. Coupled with the fact that we have a
rather small core team, this is leading to sometimes near paralysis.
It is particularly unfair to Ville, who is tasked with maintaining an
actively (and very widely) used project on a codebase with no clear
future, and yet we have in ipython1 a codebase with split-personality
disorder: lovely parallel computing interfaces but a bunch of "we'll
get there soon" components that are all half-finished.
In all this, Brian and Min try to push ip1 forward, Barry Wark works
on Cocoa, Laurent works on the WX sell, Ondrej helps us with docs but
that work is half-repeated in ip0 and ip1, etc. And in the meantime,
I'm feeling like I'm straddling a chasm (ip0-ip1) that keeps on
growing wider, with the so far unfulfilled promised of building a
bridge across it, and no realistic plan for such a bridge to really be
built any time soon. I still come back to issues with ip0 on
occasion, and I try to work on ip1, but the split is too much for my
limited time. This has left me personally disenchanted with the
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