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Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0

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Moritz rant away! Actually, I think this it is a very significant 
milestone in the development of a language and its ecosystem when 
backwards compatibility becomes an issue.

There will always be modules that have bit rot, insufficient 
documentation, inadequate testing, no reviews, etc. The problem is not 
their existence, but how they are perceived. Newcomers to Perl6 will not 
know much about which modules are useful, which are buggy, which are OK, 
etc. If a newcomer comes across some module that promises a lot and 
fails to work, it may not (unfortunately) be the module that gets the 
blame, but the Perl6 language/community/culture.

Some suggestions:

1) On the perl 6 modules page (modules.perl6.org) , sort the modules by 
number of Badges, with a label for each category like Good (all of the 
badges and 'build|passing'), Less Good (some badges and 
'build|passing'), Experimental (the rest). Perhaps also a warning about 
the modules in the category.
This way, the better quality modules are listed first by default. If 
someone wants to use a Less Good or Experimental module, they have been 
warned.

2) Add another badge for 'reviewed'. I found the CPAN reviews to be 
existentially useful, even if some of the content may be less useful. 
The fact that a module has been reviewed by someone other than the 
author increases my confidence that the module can be made to work. If 
there are negative comments, I am more cautious.

3) Would it be possible to develop a sort of Citation Index? That is the 
number of times a module uses another module? Citation Indices are 
widely used in academia to highlight key articles and papers. It's not 
an infallible tool as the system can be gamed, but it is much better 
than nothing.

4) How about developing the 'bundle' idea more? Perhaps, putting Bundles 
on the Perl6 Modules top page, starting with Task::Star? Bundles could 
be moderated more strictly. Perhaps Bundle authors would need to supply 
a mandate, eg. "Bundle for GUI  development", or "Essential beginners 
bundle". Also bundle authors would need to have vetted the modules in 
the bundle, especially those without all badges.

Regards,
Richard


On 10/14/2015 05:54 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote:
> On 10/13/2015 10:52 AM, Richard Hainsworth wrote:
>> Following on the :D not :D thread, something odd stuck out.
>>
>> On 10/13/2015 03:17 PM, Moritz Lenz wrote:
>> <snip>
>>>
>>> But hopefully none of them breaking backwards compatibility on such a
>>> large scale. The last few backwards incompatible changes still cause
>>> pain in the ecosystem. We have 390+ modules, and hand-waving away all
>>> trouble of maintaining them seems a bit lofty.
>> <snip>
>>
>> Surely, the idea of keeping the release number below 1.0 is to warn
>> early adopter developers that code is subject to change and thus in need
>> of maintenance?
>
> It is. But we still should try to limit the module author's burden.
>
> In Practice, there's a small number of people who try to update 
> modules to match when the compiler changed. Most module authors don't 
> hang out in #perl6, eager to update their modules to the lastest 
> rakudo change.
>
> So a large percentage of the module updates are done by group of maybe 
> five to a dozen volunteers. So, do the math: 5 people updating 70% of 
> 390 modules. Modules they are usually not all that familiar with, and 
> usually don't have direct access. So they need to go through the pull 
> request dance, waiting for reaction from the maintainer. In short, it 
> sucks.
>
> The ecosystem hasn't yet fully recovered from the s/done/done-testing/ 
> change, nor from the GLR, nor from the need to prefix 'unit' to some 
> declarations.
>
> And this is why I'm getting increasingly frustrated and angry when 
> people propose major breaking changes, brushing off the implications 
> for the ecosystem and its maintainers with "but it's not 6.0", 
> "shouldn't be a problem", "we aren't stable yet".
>
> We want to release Perl 6 by Christmas, and it'll reflect *very* badly 
> on us and the language if many modules in the ecosystem are broken. 
> And any change that requires us to touch all .pm files will result in 
> that.
>
> Richard, I'm sorry that I'm writing the response in an email of yours; 
> Mark or any number of p6l participants in the last few years triggered 
> the same mental response from me. I only just now articulated it.
>
> </rant>
>
> Cheers,
> Moritz

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To :D or not to :D mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-12 15:41 +0200
  Re: To :D or not to :D moritz@faui2k3.org (Moritz Lenz) - 2015-10-12 17:32 +0200
    Re: To :D or not to :D mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-12 21:51 +0200
      Re: To :D or not to :D pmichaud@pobox.com ("Patrick R. Michaud") - 2015-10-12 15:25 -0500
        Re: To :D or not to :D darren@darrenduncan.net (Darren Duncan) - 2015-10-12 13:30 -0700
        Re: To :D or not to :D solutions@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-13 00:32 +0200
          Re: To :D or not to :D pmichaud@pobox.com ("Patrick R. Michaud") - 2015-10-12 20:05 -0500
            Re: To :D or not to :D mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-14 13:37 +0200
              Re: To :D or not to :D email@froggs.de (Tobias Leich) - 2015-10-14 14:11 +0200
      Re: To :D or not to :D moritz@faui2k3.org (Moritz Lenz) - 2015-10-13 09:17 +0200
        Re: To :D or not to :D mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-13 10:41 +0200
        Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 rnhainsworth@gmail.com (Richard Hainsworth) - 2015-10-13 16:52 +0800
          Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 darren@darrenduncan.net (Darren Duncan) - 2015-10-13 15:33 -0700
          Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 moritz@faui2k3.org (Moritz Lenz) - 2015-10-14 11:54 +0200
            Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-14 12:12 +0200
            Exploit the versioning (was Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0) darren@darrenduncan.net (Darren Duncan) - 2015-10-14 04:04 -0700
            Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 Smylers@stripey.com (Smylers) - 2015-10-15 09:47 +0100
              Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 email@froggs.de (Tobias Leich) - 2015-10-15 11:06 +0200
                Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 liz@dijkmat.nl (Elizabeth Mattijsen) - 2015-10-15 12:42 +0200
                Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 mark@overmeer.net (Mark Overmeer) - 2015-10-15 12:57 +0200
                Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 liz@dijkmat.nl (Elizabeth Mattijsen) - 2015-10-15 13:13 +0200
              Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 moritz@faui2k3.org (Moritz Lenz) - 2015-10-15 14:13 +0200
            Re: Backwards compatibility and release 1.0 rnhainsworth@gmail.com (Richard Hainsworth) - 2015-10-15 12:48 +0800

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