launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

2009/12/2 Jonathan Lange <jml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> 2b. Not having the owner in the URL puts the onus on the user to
> choose a good package-wide name
>
> John wants daily builds of launchpadlib -- these Launchpad guys never
> release! He sets up the recipe at:
>    https://lp.net/ubuntu/python-launchpadlib/+recipe/nightly.
>
> It's great for a while, but then John starts really getting into
> desktopcouch and hacking on Quickly and doesn't really do launchpadlib
> stuff any more. The Launchpad team ends up doing something that breaks
> the packaging branch in John's recipe, and the recipe is broken.
>
> Kara, meanwhile, has been using launchpadlib more and more as part of
> her daily activities with Ubuntu development. She sees that John's PPA
> is out of date, and decides to fix it. She sees that John's packaging
> branch is broken, makes a new one that works and then goes to make her
> own python-launchpadlib recipe.
>
> She'd like to call it "nightly", but that's taken. Hmm. She could call
> it "daily", but that would mean explaining to everyone on IRC that
> they should use "daily" and not "nightly". She could call it
> "kara-nightly", although that makes it sound like a special variant,
> rather than the one you should use (it also sounds too much like the
> name of a decidedly mediocre actress). "nightly-working" is terrible,
> and forebodes future "nightly-really-working" nightmares.

Nice stories.

The other option open to Kara is Appeal to a Higher Authority by
getting the owners of python-launchpadlib or launchpad admins to
either

 - boot out (rename, delete, hide) John's recipe
 - give her write access to that recipe

.. or in fact she could ask John to do this, assuming he's still
answering mail at all.

In some ways this is good because it matches what's conceptually
happening: there is one nightly build, and responsibility for it is
transferred, either gracefully or using a big hammer, from one person
to another.

It is bad in that it means Kara is potentially blocked waiting for
someone to help her (see Social foo thread), and she may respond to
that blockage by making kara-nightly anyhow.

This problem could be avoided if John indicates his readiness for this
by making it owned by eg ~python-launchpadlib or ~nightly-builders in
the first place so the handover can be graceful.  In which case it
matters less whether the name is in the URL anyhow.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>