launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Matthew Revell <matthew.revell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 1 February 2012 03:32, Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi, please glance at https://dev.launchpad.net/PolicyAndProcess/MaintenanceCosts
>
> The basic idea is that we are where we are today because we didn't at
> any point put a cap on the overheads involved in maintaining
> Launchpad. The ratio of developer time that goes into maintenance vs
> delivering new functionality is quite high, and if it continues to
> grow we may never climb out of the technical-debt hole that we have.

Thanks for writing this.

In terms of features, it'd be interesting to have a "no feature is
sacred" mentality. I think we already do, to an extent and that we
should keep it in mind when considering what we can cut in order to
reduce maintenance burden.

For example, and only an example, imports from Mercurial have never
worked particularly well, we don't have time to fix them right now and
there are fewer than 200 active (around 40 of which are borked)
imports. That's a pretty easy example but I bet there are other places
where we can sharpen Launchpad's focus to those things it does well
and, in doing so, reduce maintenance costs.

-- 
Matthew Revell
Launchpad Product Manager
Canonical

https://launchpad.net/~matthew.revell