On 2/27/12 5:27 PM, "Ryan Frishberg" <fri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a good question. I think it makes sense to create a spot on the
> wiki for specifications. Some of the stuff on there might not even be
> component specifications per sey, but some topics like the Architecture
> Review Board discussed. You can see how it was done on the old page:
> http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+4
>
> I think that having some discussion occur on wiki pages via comments and
> edits is totally fine as long as the mailing list gets looped in at the
> beginning and the end. At most places I've worked, specs get announced on
> some mailing list with a particular "sign off" date. From that point,
> people can post comments. Once it's signed off, another mail is sent to
> the mailing list.
>
> If people agree to this, we should probably also transfer the
> opensource.adobe.com pages to the apache wiki. There are probably also
> some internal wiki's that are still hiding inside the Adobe firewall that
> would be good to push out to the apache site.
>
I will have to go back and look at the summit video, but my first reaction
is that this isn't the "Apache way". While we definitely need to have
documentation of how things work, I don't think we're supposed to be
predicting how things will work, which is what a specification is to me.
We're just supposed to write code. And I would definitely not want to
require a spec before submitting code. Some stuff takes longer to write
about than to actually write, and the truth is in the code, not in a bunch
of ambiguous words.
I think it should be a judgement call, and discussions should be on list.
IOW, if I am just putting together a ProgressBar, I'll probably just code
one up and submit it and folks will comment on it and we'll make
adjustments. If I'm about to spend 2 weeks coding up something much more
complex or controversial, I will probably discuss on the list so I don't
waste my time. And then when I actually check in something, I will try to
remember to keep the documentation up to date.
Specs were useful as a mechanism to foster communication and coordination
between several separate teams of QA, Doc, and management, and/or between
several engineers working together in a coordinated fashion, but I think it
will be the exception that more than one engineer will be working like that.
I expect code will be changed in the same "lazy" fashion everything else
gets done; whenever someone has the time. And in that case, any "spec"
might be better put in the code as documentation or a readme in subversion.
--
Alex Harui
Flex SDK Team
Adobe Systems, Inc.
http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui
