Proposal: Marking "Work In Progress" explicitly

[Bart Cerneels]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 15:16, Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 2:51 PM, Ian Monroe <ian.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 7:06 AM, Mark Kretschmann <kretschmann at kde.org> wrote:
>>> lately it has happened that in some cases people had accidentally
>>> removed code that others were working on, not with any evil intent,
>>> but just because of a misunderstanding. I think that's mostly just a
>>> matter of communication. Here's one simple idea for solving this:
>>>
>>> If we create classes/methods that are work in progress, how about
>>> marking them with a comment like this:
>>>
>>> /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>>> // THIS CLASS IS WORK IN PROGRESS. Please do not touch for now.
>>> /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>>>
>>> I think that this simple method might solve such issues easily and
>>> without much hassle.
>>
>> I just worry about these comments staying there forever.
>>
>> Just check the git log to see if a file is being messed with at the moment.
>
> The "git log" proposal is not enough. I'm referring to a mishap that
> happened last night, but it's no use pointing fingers at anyone. Was
> just a misunderstanding.
>
> Anyway, if people are so forgetful that they would forget about
> removing this header, would they also forget about getting dressed in
> the morning?
>
>
> If someone is _that_ forgetful, all sorts of things could happen. Such
> people probably shouldn't touch any code at all ;)
>
> --
> Mark Kretschmann
> Amarok Developer, Software Engineer at Collabora Ltd
> Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe
> http://amarok.kde.org - http://www.fsfe.org - http://collabora.co.uk
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>

It's still better to ask if it was not already clear from general
communication that the feature is abandoned. It can also serve as a
reminder to the lazy forgetful developer to complete it.

And if you end up removing a feature while refactoring, at least make
the remove one, simple to revert commit.

Bart