Re: [ghc-steering-committee] Statistical analysis of GHC proposals

This is indeed interesting, thanks Andrew. We have some impressively mature proposals! Something I've been mulling over for a while is that our process tends not to explicitly reject many proposals, but it is not unusual for proposals to stall in one of two states: 1. There is some initial discussion, but no final decision, and the original author stops actively driving the proposal forward (e.g. because they no longer have time or enthusiasm). In some cases the discussion may have been leaning towards rejection, but in others there are good ideas lingering that need someone to pick them up. 2. The proposal is accepted, but then lingers awaiting implementation. This is difficult to address in a world of limited resources for GHC development (both volunteer effort and paid maintainer time). At the moment I usually wait until a proposal author explicitly submits the proposal for committee consideration before assigning a shepherd. It is then the shepherd's responsibility to make progress in a reasonable time. One change I've been wondering about is that we might try to identify shepherds from the committee at an earlier stage, and/or encourage shepherds to volunteer when they see an interesting proposal. The shepherd could then help the original author respond to the discussion and move through the process (perhaps including taking over the proposal if the original author is no longer engaging). For example I'm effectively trying to do this on #668. This might result in fewer proposals getting blocked indefinitely, at the cost of more shepherding work for the committee. What do you all think? Adam On 28/10/2024 08:13, Simon Peyton Jones wrote:

Dear Andrew

Thank you -- that's very interesting.

GHC SC: do look below!

I'm not quite sure what, if anything, we should do in the light of this information.

Simon

On Sun, 27 Oct 2024 at 23:06, Andrew Lelechenko mailto:andrew.lelechenko@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Simon,

I’ve been exploring GitHub API capabilities by gathering data on GHC proposals. I wonder if any of the numbers below might be interesting to reflect on for GHC SC.

Total number of GHC proposals: 441 Rate of proposals:  5 per month Approved proposals: 149 Need revision:      30 Declined proposals: 16

Median  time from creation to decision: 101 days Average time from creation to decision: 181 days Median  time from creation to approval: 100 days Average time from creation to approval: 165 days Fastest approval:         8 days for "Adjust warning category syntax" 2nd fastest approval:         11 days for "Remove dot from characters allowed in overloaded labels" 2nd slowest approval:         980 days for "Fine-grained unused warnings" Slowest approval:         1112 days for "Decorate exceptions with backtrace information"

Total activity: 15999 comments Median  activity per proposal:          23 comments Average activity per proposal:          36 comments Median  activity per approved proposal: 31 comments Average activity per approved proposal: 51 comments Least active approved proposal:         1 comment for "Amend the Higher Order Patterns proposal" 2nd least active approved proposal:         2 comments for "Amend 281 visible forall to work without ScopedTypeVariables" 2nd most active:         313 comments for "Lambda expressions with guards and multiple clauses (was: `\\ of`, -XMultiWayLambda)" Most active:         519 comments for "RecordDotSyntax language extension proposal"

Open proposals: 117 Median  age for open proposals: 1105 days Average age for open proposals: 1215 days Newest open proposal:         12 days for "Clarify CRLF behavior in multiline strings" Oldest open proposal:         2960 days for "Mutable constructor fields"

Best regards, Andrew

-- Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant Well-Typed LLP, https://www.well-typed.com/ Registered in England & Wales, OC335890 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, England