From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 13 10:49:58 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DB45916A4CE for ; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:49:58 -0800 (PST) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C9FA443D73 for ; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 10:49:28 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.12.10/8.12.10) with ESMTP id i0DIllUd030188; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:47:47 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)i0DIlkm7030185; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:47:46 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 13:47:46 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Matteo Riondato In-Reply-To: <1074000332.18384.43.camel@kaiser.sig11.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Status reports - why not regularly? X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 18:49:59 -0000 On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Matteo Riondato wrote: > I'm sorry but I cannot understand your point (this can be my poor > english fault..). I'm talking about writing a Report, not about Vinum > or in general software development. If neither of us two can understand > what each commit means, we cannot write a report about the status of the > project and we have to ask a developer to explain what he did. After > that we could write our report. The reason I selected the model I did for status reports was that it attempted to take into account that our commit message flow is very technical and hard to follow for end users, and that our developers know the most about where things have been and where they are going. The problem with this model is it requires us to poll the developers, and this works fairly well but is time consuming. I got caught up in release engineering and then a lot of other stuff, and then Scott got caught up in release engineering in a big way, and so the status reports lagged as a result. I'd like to get them going again, however, as I think they are very important -- not just for end users, but also so developers see "the big picture". In a large project, it sometimes feels you're amid chaos and lack of direction, but really what it takes is someone picking and choosing what to present in order to make things clear :-). Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Senior Research Scientist, McAfee Research