[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Should we split the mailing lists?

[Scott McKellar]

As far as I'm concerned, this list is not too crowded yet.  It's
pretty easy to spot things that I'm not interested in, or can't
contribute to.  When I post patches, or comments on the code, I try
to provide subject lines that will enable people to avoid my post
if they're not interested in code.

There is also some virtue in encouraging cross-fertilization between
the coding discussions and the installation/configuration discussions.

Case in point: Harry Bochner once reported that he got a coredump.
When I saw his post I looked at the code and realized that, while I
didn't know how to avoid the problem, I could at least avoid the
coredump by providing an intelligible error message and aborting.
So I submitted a small patch.

Later Hennie rported getting the new error message.  Although I
don't usually pay much attention to installation and configuration
problems, I recognized the new message and was able to provide
what I hope was some helpful direction.

If the list had been split in two, I probably wouldn't have connected
the dots -- unless I followed both lists, and I probably wouldn't.
Or if I did, it would be more work than following a single list.

The one thing I do worry about is that my sometimes acerbic 
commentary on the code may leave the impression among the non-coders
on the list that the code is crappy.  It's not.  Actually I'm 
impressed.  But as always happens when people write a lot of code 
in a short amount of time, it's not impeccable either.  It's the 
occasional peccable parts that give me reason to comment.

Scott McKellar
http://home.swbell.net/mck9/aargh/

--- Jason Etheridge <jasone at georgialibraries.org> wrote:

> Hi folks,
> 
> There's been a lot of traffic on OPEN-ILS-DEV, and we're wondering if
> we should try to splinter some of that off into other lists.  So we'd
> like to get your opinions on that.
> 
> One notion is to create an OPEN-ILS-PATCHES for patches and
> discussion
> revolving around those patches, sort of an "active development" list.
> We could then keep the install, configuration, and administration
> questions on OPEN-ILS-DEV.
> 
> What do you think?  Do any other divisions make sense?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> -- 
> Jason Etheridge
> GPLS -- PINES Development
> http://open-ils.org/
>