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SMF 2.0.13 Released

Started by Oldiesmann, January 05, 2017, 03:31:47 PM

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tinoest

Quote from: Arantor on May 09, 2017, 03:14:34 AM
So engage the community to help. There are people who can help. Who are offering to help with this.

I tried that two months ago and it was clear they weren't interested in others help.

Arantor

@tinoest, this is why I quit the dev team 3 years ago, and things are in pretty much the exact same state :(

MobileCS

Quote from: SleePy on May 09, 2017, 07:14:24 PM
Devs are busy with real life and haven't had a chance to dig into what caused that issue (and neither have I).

How many *active* Devs are there on the team?

shawnb61

Quote from: tinoest on May 10, 2017, 02:44:33 PMI tried that two months ago and it was clear they weren't interested in others help.

I hear what you're saying, & I have a slightly different take on that.  I recently taught myself .php to help on 2.1.

My perceptions are that it's a small team, and each is focused on their set of concerns/contributions.  The team will rarely interact with noobs such as myself on the Issues list; to really get some attention, you must submit a PR.  Yes, outside PRs are prioritized lower, but I have always received good feedback, & all of my PRs have been tested & implemented.

Sometimes, though, it has taken well over a month for a response - any response.  This makes it hard to tell if you're working on things that are actually helping...

I sense the team struggles with the balance of new features vs fixes submitted by folks.  Bandwidth is if course an issue.  The 2.0 environment consumes time for weeks on end around release times and 2.1 falls by the wayside when that happens.  Crunch time (like recently with 2.0.14), as on any project, is not a good time to fold in new folks.  And like any team, they sometimes disagree.

So here are a few suggestions I have:
- Interact with noobs better inbetween 2.0 crunch times; respond to issues candidly - cultivate the new contributors
- All new issues should be clearly, quickly identified as bugs or enhancements
- All new issues should be clearly, quickly prioritized (assigned a release); old issues, too for that matter...
- Ensure the RC milestone assignments are meaningful; review & prune regularly
- Be firm closing out issues when you'd prefer volunteers focus elsewhere
- Be firm closing out old issues (many, frankly, are what I'd term philosophical debates among the Ancient Ones Who Are No Longer With Us...)

This will definitely hurt some feelings, but over time, will provide crisp direction & help cultivate the pool of contributors.

Sorry for rambling on.  Hope this helps.
Address the process rather than the outcome.  Then, the outcome becomes more likely.   - Fripp

Colin

Hey Shawn,

Those are all excellent suggestions and I'll post an update with some changes (many that you mentioned) regrading how we invite and prioritize development contributions in the coming week or so. I hear you, it is frustrating to wait for a review and get little feedback, especially when you work so hard on a PR. We are bringing on some new blood and hoping to speed up the 2.1 PR review process as soon as 2.0.14 gets out the door.

I just pushed the latest revision of the patch for internal review within the team and we are hoping this will be the release candidate. Hang in there.
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody is not thinking." - Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Colin

Colin

#105
Quote from: tinoest on May 10, 2017, 02:44:33 PM
Quote from: Arantor on May 09, 2017, 03:14:34 AM
So engage the community to help. There are people who can help. Who are offering to help with this.

I tried that two months ago and it was clear they weren't interested in others help.

I'm be in favor of opening up some of the future patch development for the 2.0 line
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody is not thinking." - Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Colin

Arantor

It's not like there isn't a board where the old timers could contribute in private dealing with any bugs without unfinished releases getting into the wild, or anything.

Ben_S

Quote from: tinoest on May 10, 2017, 02:44:33 PM
Quote from: Arantor on May 09, 2017, 03:14:34 AM
So engage the community to help. There are people who can help. Who are offering to help with this.

I tried that two months ago and it was clear they weren't interested in others help.

Strange, looked to me like Arantor was offering to see if he could help out earlier in this thread but noone took up his offer...

An ideal solution would have been to release the image proxy stuff as a mod in the meantime, or if the development wasn't behind closed doors users could have simply backported it for themselves.

It's sad but after almost 17 years with YaBB, YaBB SE & SMF I really am about to bite the bullet and migrate to Xenforo.

Liverpool FC Forum with 14 million+ posts.

Antes

Quote from: Colin on May 10, 2017, 05:42:55 PM
Quote from: tinoest on May 10, 2017, 02:44:33 PM
Quote from: Arantor on May 09, 2017, 03:14:34 AM
So engage the community to help. There are people who can help. Who are offering to help with this.

I tried that two months ago and it was clear they weren't interested in others help.

I'm be in favor of opening up some of the future patch development for the 2.0 line

ehm... I suggested, pre-release board to specific membergroups back in day...

tinoest

@shawnb61 - I do agree with you to a certain extent although Arantor who offered in this thread was a former SMF dev and I've been programming daily as a job for over 8 years. ( not that anyone on the SMF team will know that ) Arantor I also believe has Zend qualifications for what it's worth.

They just don't seem to be receptive to help on the occasion I offered which is why I stopped submitting PR's on github ( although I didn't do a great deal as I'm generally busy as we all are )

gorbi

Let them release the beta 2.0.14

Arantor

SMF has never publicly released beta versions of patches before - but it's not like there isn't a place for veterans (you know, like people who have actually written SMF patches before now) that could take a look and maybe help out.

If the 'we're all volunteers' tagline is going to stick around to handwave away any perceived requirement to do some work, maybe allowing more people in isn't such a bad idea.

Given that PHP 7 debuted in December 2015 - we're now 18 months on from that and still no published patch... even for a team that wears the 'we're all volunteers' badge to deflect any criticism, that's a long time, guys. It makes me wonder if I should wait for 2.1 to be released or whether I start looking at forking SMF again because frankly I don't think I can trust SMF to release anything in a timely fashion any more.

Burridge

SMF is open source, yes? It does confuse me there isn't a public repository for the SMF 2.0.X branch. Surely having an open repository for the 2.0.X branch would be a good thing and would overall improve the product as well as improve the waiting times on new patches.

It does seem that SM does have a repository for the 2.0 line, so why not use it?
https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.0

Arantor

Open source does not automatically imply open development, but very often confused and conflated as they are being here.

And given history, the number and quality of contributions would likely be questionable, possibly creating more work than not having contributors.

Burridge

Quote from: Arantor on May 12, 2017, 04:37:54 AM
Open source does not automatically imply open development, but very often confused and conflated as they are being here.
Hmm, you learn something new everyday! I'll do well to remember that, thanks.

Colin

Quote from: Arantor on May 12, 2017, 02:37:47 AM
Given that PHP 7 debuted in December 2015 - we're now 18 months on from that and still no published patch... even for a team that wears the 'we're all volunteers' badge to deflect any criticism, that's a long time, guys. It makes me wonder if I should wait for 2.1 to be released or whether I start looking at forking SMF again because frankly I don't think I can trust SMF to release anything in a timely fashion any more.

Not sure what to say other than, yes took substantially longer than expected but we are nearly there (doing final testing of the patch).

We'd love to have your help on 2.1. Help us get that out the door :)

With that said, it seems like we are going quite a bit off topic for the SMF 2.0.13 release thread.
"If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody is not thinking." - Gen. George S. Patton Jr.

Colin

Illori

Quote from: Colin on May 12, 2017, 04:43:13 AM
With that said, it seems like we are going quite a bit off topic for the SMF 2.0.13 release thread.

thank you all for your interest in SMF. this topic is about the release of SMF 2.0.13, since it has gone off track this topic is now locked.

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