Re: List of Issues with 'patch_abandoned' assigned to them - asofSeptember 2015

[Trevor Daniels]

David Kastrup wrote Monday, September 21, 2015 9:16 AM


> "Trevor Daniels" <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> David Kastrup wrote Sunday, September 20, 2015 11:34 PM
>>
>>> James Lowe <address@hidden> writes:
>>> 
>>>> On 20/09/15 22:52, Simon Albrecht wrote:
>>>>> On 20.09.2015 23:10, James Lowe wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My thinking is like this; I pick an issue to work on, I do some stuff,
>>>>>> make a patch, have a discussion, then get bored and go silent.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The issue is now patch_abandoned.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> What is the benefit of leaving this label (or even having it in the
>>>>>> first place)
>>>>> 
>>>>> One can see immediately that a patch has already been prepared for this
>>>>> issue, which may serve as a starting point for future work. True,
>>>>> anybody to pick up such an issue would have to read through the entire
>>>>> discussion anyway, but I’d rather ask the other way round:
>>>>> What’s the benefit of deleting the Patch label, or the harm that a
>>>>> Patch:abandoned does?
>>>>
>>>> Extra cruft that serves no purpose as I can see.
>>>>
>>>> We have waiting/needs_work already.
>>> 
>>> Both of those indicate that the Patch is not (yet?) abandoned.
>>
>> The key difference is one of ownership.  The LP developers have
>> a tradition of not interfering (other than by commenting) on the development
>> of a patch to an issue already "owned" by someone else.  Patch 
>> waiting/needs_work means the current owner is still planning to do more 
>> work, so other devs let it ride.  Patch abandoned means the previous 
>> dev has given up, so anyone else is free to take it up and change the 
>> ownership.  Well, at least that's my understanding.
> 
> No, that's not entirely related.  I may give up on a particular approach
> to an issue, making it pointless to pursue a particular patch, but still
> want to cook up a different patch or solve the problem in the context of
> another issue.  Patch abandoned just means that the latest proposed
> patch is not going to be pursued further, not that the issue owner has
> given up on a particular problem altogether.

We don't really have a mechanism to handle multiple patches, so I think
we can discount that possibility.  We usually use Patch needs_work to
cover the situation where the current patch is inadequate and further work
is in progress.  I'd rather adopt my interpretation as a more useful use 
of this limited set of markers, namely that Patch abandoned really means, 
"I've given up on working on this issue and the current patch is now up for 
grabs for someone else to improve on it."  And I'd suggest an issue should
be placed in this state by the Bug Squad if no action on it has been apparent
by the current owner for over 6 months.

Trevor