ANNOUNCE: GHC 6.8.1 Second Release Candidate

[Simon Peyton-Jones]

Hi Claus

I'm catching up with my backlog!

| - the current tracking system is not set up efficiently: one cannot
|     tell the state of play just by looking at a ticket, but has to delve
|     into the comments instead; in brief, trac is still mostly tracking
|     tickets, instead of tracking the state of work in a workflow.

That's true.  As Simon mentioned, the Trac people know this too and plan to fix it. When they do, we'll use the 'Status' field (which is the Right Thing but currently un-configurable) to track workflow.  We'll probably try to keep it very simple though.

| - having whole groups of tickets without any milestone, or
|     with obsolete milestones, stongly suggests that the tracker
|     has passed its limits of useability and needs to be looked
|     into as a matter of urgency before things get worse

As you know, we are heads-down getting 6.8 out. Once it's out, we'll get back to triaging.

| i've also been trying to contribute three patches over
| the last two months, and they are still not in;

The reason is the same: 6.8 is the priority and everything else (even triaging) is queued up. I know of one patch from you (the one that Simon has tested a couple of times), but I don't know of two others. Perhaps we have missed them: can you point to their tickets?

| the various,
| mostly non-technical delays, combined with the various
| non-problem-specific hurdles, sent me a clear message
| of  "don't bother".

I'm very sorry that that's the message you received.  It obviously isn't the message we are trying to transmit!  The various non-technical obstacles include writing documentation, generating tests, and ensuring that the patch passes validation. These are indeed obstacles, but they are all ones fervently requested by our contributors. (Validation is a recent example.)  I don't know how to make them less onerous.

Incidentally, in direct response to your earlier suggestion I did write up the workflows.  Follow this link and the look at the "How to fix a bug" and "How to add a feature" links.
        http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/WorkingConventions
If you have suggestions for improving them, do let us know.

Simon