The Purpose of the Dev Chat
Every now and then it seems like people forget the purpose of the dev chat, or new community members aren’t clear on it, so I thought this, the beginning of a new development cycle, would be a good time to reiterate the purpose of the dev chat. The dev chat is a weekly product team meeting (see About the Dev Chat), not a weekly social gathering/town hall/q&a. For anyone who’s ever worked at a software company, an agency, etc., this should be a familiar concept: The team working on a software project meets, everyone gives an update on their part of the project, any roadblocks/red flags are identified and solutions are discussed, and updated assignments are given/confirmed.
Each release cycle we remind people that this is the intended use of the dev chat, but somehow along the way we wind up losing track of that, and it turns into a combination of dev chat + ideas forum + wp-hackers live. Because the 3.1 cycle is so short (feature freeze is little more than a month away!), we need to stay focused this time around. We will be much stricter about staying on agenda, and while anyone is welcome to attend, we will ask people who have questions/suggestions that are not on the agenda to either wait until the dev chat is over or to bring it up in another venue, such as wp-hackers, on a Trac ticket, or in the forums.
It’s understandable that many people want a direct line to the lead developers, and knowing they will be in a specific place at a specific time makes it easy to corner them to pitch pet requests, but please respect that these busy individuals are continually prioritizing the pet requests of hundreds of people and millions of users. Hijacking their product team meeting doesn’t help anyone’s cause.
“Are you kicking me out?” some people may be thinking to themselves. No. The #wordpress-dev channel is open 24/7, and given the time zone distribution, there’s usually one or more lead developers in there, as well as numerous contributors. Discussion about core topics is welcome in the #wordpress-dev channel any time, and questions are usually answered gladly (and let’s face it, @nacin never sleeps). The weekly team meeting just needs to stay on target, on schedule, and focused on the actual contributing team. Though most people are volunteers working on WordPress core part-time, contributors are part of a product team, and their time should be treated with the same respect that any corporate product team would receive, if not more.
If you are not working on patches for this cycle, please let the core product team get through its agenda. Hang on to your other questions to ask during one of the 167 hours per week in the channel that don’t have a specific agenda/schedule, or ask in another venue (Trac tickets are best, since it’s asynchronous and acts as the permanent discussion record for each feature). A good guideline here would be to think of another piece of software that you use. Let’s say Firefox or Microsoft Word. If you wanted a new feature, or wished they would code something a certain way so you could do something you specifically want to do for your clients, would you interrupt their product team meetings to ask for it? If not, then please grant the same courtesy to the WordPress developers. If you would interrupt them because you found something so major that it really needed to be addressed asap (like a security problem), then please don’t wait for the weekly dev chat! Get in touch with the developers in the channel right away, so that someone can assess the issue.
If you’re following along in the dev chat and while the team is discussing a specific feature you think of something about the way they’re approaching it that you feel certain the lead devs/core contributors haven’t thought of yet, you are welcome to speak up (having read the Trac ticket first is a good idea, to make sure you’re not raising something that has already been discussed and dismissed). Maybe your idea is brilliant and everyone will thank you for the suggestion/fresh approach — go you! However, if you make your suggestion and the product team is not inclined to take it, please respect their decision. At that point, the best way to try and convince someone that your suggestion is a better approach is to code the patch yourself and upload it to Trac. Patches speak much louder than words in this case.
Remember, the WordPress motto is “Code is poetry,” and for this particular hour each week, the poets are the main event. Thanks!
Andrew Nacin 3:52 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
Well said.
Jacob Santos 6:32 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
What do you do when you have a patch and it isn’t getting any traction? This might be a good post to do next.
JohnONolan 6:51 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
Write a plugin?
Jacob Santos 7:46 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
Clarification: What happens when you write a patch that isn’t getting any traction that fixes a bug or can’t be handled by a plugin?
Jane Wells 8:21 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
@Jacob: publicize it, advocate for it, get people to test it and leave feedback on the ticket. If there’s ‘no traction’ it usually means they’re waiting for it to be tested and weighed in on by the community. If they just don’t want to commit something, they’ll say so and close the ticket.
Ryan McCue 9:22 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
In any case, I’d say just to mention it to a developer, but *after* the dev chat. No reason it needs to be brought up during the dev chat itself.
Mark Jaquith 9:36 pm on September 9, 2010 Permalink
I like Ryan’s suggestion. We usually hang around a bit. Fine to wait for and ping us with some tickets we may have not seen or need to revisit.
Stephanie Leary 4:18 pm on September 10, 2010 Permalink
This is great information, but I feel like you’re preaching to the choir by placing it here, as most of the people who need to hear this still aren’t aware that this blog exists.
Maybe a new wiki page linking off the dev chat mention in the channel description…?
Andrew Nacin 5:35 pm on September 10, 2010 Permalink
I think very few who idle in #wordpress-dev fail to follow this blog. The exception would be individuals who wander over from #wordpress, thinking that dev is for development in general, versus core development chatter, but those individuals are simply in the wrong place. Those who need to read this post I imagine have read it.
That said, I think you’re spot on about the lack of good information (as also mentioned in #wordpress-dev earlier) for where patch contributors should go for help, how to get involved, how code makes it into WordPress, etc. Changing that is a very important goal of the core contributor handbook. But back to this, mostly they just are not aware of the IRC resources, not vice versa.
arena 10:26 am on September 12, 2010 Permalink
Could it be possible to clean up TRAC for the “Future Release milestone” which has 900 tickets … and counting !!
thanks
Andrew Nacin 6:04 am on September 13, 2010 Permalink
You’re welcome to assist. If I had to guess, I bet 200 tickets can be instantly closed as a duplicate (potentially since it has already been implemented), wontfix (such as some feature requests better as plugins or ideas), or invalid. Milestones are not editable but that doesn’t stop triage from occurring. And “Suggest 3.1″ for example is all it takes for one of us to move the ticket.