launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 3:15 AM, Aaron Bentley <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 12-02-08 07:57 PM, Robert Collins wrote:
>> - move most of utilities/* to the lpdevtools project - thats 6K LOC
>> on its own
>
> If our goal is to reduce maintenance costs, how does moving code from
> Launchpad to lpdevtools accomplish that?

In general for the moved code:
 - faster iterations (all tests can be run in shorter timeframes)
 - better locality of reference when editing it
 - clearer external contracts / interfaces - the borders are crisper

In general for the tree the code was extracted from:
 - faster test suite time
   - can run against a mock of the now formal interface
   - no longer run tests of the implementation of the interface
 - More focused code base
 - May well be able to reuse an existing implementation instead.

Now for lpdevtools itself some of these points are rather weak,
because it is tools to work on lp rather than the implementation; and
we've historically got poor testing of our utilities.
However, we're moving LP to be a collection of heterogeneous services
and it already is a collection of many source code components; many of
the tools we have written (e.g. the lint script that takes bzr st into
account) are very useful for other source trees.

Having one reusable location for [most of] our utility scripts means
that we don't need to copy/propogate them amongst other components,
and we don't need to think hard about where to go to find/edit them.

-Rob