[ckan-dev] CREPs - important proposal!

Thu May 5 15:58:42 UTC 2011

* [2011-05-05 16:04:31 +0100] Seb Bacon <seb.bacon at gmail.com> écrit:

] (where did Will add that? I missed it)

In the Trac.

] All too often I hear about some
] great new thing someone has started implementing (or already has
] implemented) too late for my input.

I agree this is a problem - I found out to my suprise about some
interesting planned changes from James just by accident because he
happend to be in town over the past few days. However a less-formal
"discuss it or send a note to the mailing list" would fix this as
well.

The formal process of PEP and DEP are not really comparable to CKAN
because the scope and requirements are vastly different. Python and
Debian have to support third-party developers that expect API
stability through and through in the long term. CKAN is a web
application. Its development and user communities are orders of
magnitude smaller. Its code base is orders of magnitude smaller.
There are vanishingly few third party modules that depend in any way
on the code. It seems to me that this kind of process would drag
people down farther into document production when they would be better
off and happier making improvements to the software.

I would support a more formal process in some important areas - like
changes to the JSON protocol because that affects third parties and
interoperability. Changes to the JSON protocol can break things that
are not under the control of the CKAN developers so more care is
needed.

I write this knowing that it will likely be the minority viewpoint.

-w
--
William Waites                <mailto:ww at styx.org>
http://river.styx.org/ww/        <sip:ww at styx.org>
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