Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew Stitt <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

Now that the grimoire lead election is over I wanted to send a note
out. In short, Im going to more formally limit my involvement in smgl,
beyond what I've stated already. By my standards, I haven't been holding
up my end of things in regards to sorcery for a considerable time. I
think its best that I be honest with what level of contribution I can
make, and leave things at that. I apologize for the committments I've
made and been unable to keep...

I think I started as SL in April of 2004, so its been about 3
years. SL re-elections are in July. I dont think I'll be running for
re-election. I think it would be counter-productive. As such, I've got
a few months left "in office", I plan on serving out my term in its
entirety. That is, unless the group prefer otherwise; I would have no
objection if the group thinks I should step down now, or any time between
now and July.

In anycase, once I leave my post, I will not simply disappear. I'll continue 
to
participate and contribute in some capacity. Most likely in a less
central role. Im trying out different small projects and ideas, and seeing 
what interests and motivates me right now. Since joining, Ive worked on many 
different things. This is the next step in that progression. More on that 
later.

Since Im not going to be in charge of sorcery forever, I'd like to
build some redundancy into things before I step down.

As sorcery component lead my main responsibilities are rolling out new
tarballs, triaging bugs, fixing bugs, reviewing patches, applying patches,
and the big one discussion and implementation of new functionality.

I'd like to create an assistants position for someone to do what I call
"regular maintainence". The responsibilities would be applying patches,
doing small level fixes, rolling out tarballs, integrating fixes, and
should the assistant want to, official releases. This wouldn't be a highly
technical or particularly glamorous role, just work that needs doing.
I'd continue to triage bugs, suggest or write fixes, and discuss feature
ideas.

I've mentioned the assistant plan casually on irc and have gotten
some interest. If nothing else, someone needs to know how to do my job
should I get hit by a bus. Considering that I use public transit on
a daily basis, that might not be too improbable[0] ;-)

Contact me if interested in the assistants position.

---

As for 1.14.x, there are several "big" features in it. Most of which
directly related to the sorcery/spell interface. Staging, spell file
inheritence, and sub-depends. It might be worth considering to let things
settle with the grimoire release cycle before introducing that to the
stable environment. Consider the project's priorities, and what resources
exist, then decide what is best.

As for what to do with sorcery in the long term, I dont have a good
answer. I ran things in a very specific way, I had my own style. It
worked in some ways, and not others. However, things dont have to be
run that way, its probably best that they *not* be run the same way for
a while. The landscape here has certainly changed in 3 years.

One option is to let things continue mostly as they are. Let the ship
sail on its own. There arent many critical features we need in sorcery
at this time. Most (if not all) problems can be solved satisfactorally
with the existing interfaces if one tries hard enough. I can certainly
help with ideas here.

A similar idea is to specifically *not* have a designated sorcery lead,
and instead treat sorcery as a more communal body of code, more like
the grimoire.

Sorcery is very modular inside, and the interfaces between them are
pretty well defined and stable. Large multi-module re-writes are probably
unnecessary. Each component can have maintainers working in concert
with one-another. Spell file inheritence also provides a bridge between
spells and sorcery, I think that provides a much easier path to the
internals of sorcery than was previously available.

Whatever happens, my hope is that the good ideas that have gone into
sorcery and the sorcery/grimoire api will stand up over time and
continue to be useful. Moreover that the bad ideas will get flushed
out and replaced with better solutions.

---

On to what I might be doing in the future, once out of the SL role. I
plan to remain as a resource for how sorcery works, and all things
internal to it. I can offer my advice on how to fix or design things to
the future SL, should they be interested in it. I can also offer advice
on how to solve problems on the grimoire side using sorcery interfaces.

On my own, I think I'll be doing a lot of writing and
experimenting. Mostly writing brain-dumps on how parts of sorcery
work. Im considering maintaining documents on the projects "bigger"
issues. Things that come to mind are the sorcery UI (mainly casts
questions), config files, installation. I'd like to play a role in
bringing those issues to a close, not necessarily in the near-term, not
necessarily by myself. At the very least I'd like to keep the ideas
documented somewhere, should other people be interested in working on them. 

I like helping people solve problems, so most of the things I think of
that I do will revolve around that. What level of involvement I have,
I dont know yet. I dont know what I'll be able to give, and I dont really
know how receptive people will be. Time will tell.

Thanks for reading

-Andrew

[0] 
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/04/BAGURP28EP1.DTL

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