My own understanding is this: A GHC *user* is someone who uses GHC, but doesn't care how it is implemented. A GHC *developer* is someone who wants to work on GHC itself in some way. The current mailing lists: * glasgow-haskell-users: for anything that a GHC *user* cares about * glasgow-haskell-bugs: same, but with a focus on bug reporting * cvs-ghc: for GHC *developers* I don't think we want to confuse users with developers. If we flood users with dev-related conversations they'll get fed up. I don't see a very useful distinction between glasgow-haskell-users and glasgow-haskell-bugs. The distinction was very important before we had a bug tracker, but it doesn't seem useful now. I can see a perhaps-useful distinction between two *developer* lists (A) human email about implementation aspects of GHC (B) machine-generated email from buildbots etc I rather think that (A) could usefully include Trac ticket creation and Git commit messages, since both are really human-generated. So that would leave only buildbot logs on (B). So I would be content to * Abolish glasgow-haskell-bugs in favour of glasgow-haskell-users * Split out cvs-ghc into two in some way; details to be agreed. But for me the issue is not a pressing one. Simon | -----Original Message----- | From: glasgow-haskell-users-bounces@haskell.org [mailto:glasgow-haskell- | users-bounces@haskell.org] On Behalf Of Austin Seipp | Sent: 06 December 2012 03:21 | To: Carter Schonwald | Cc: GHC Users List | Subject: Re: proposal: separate lists for ghc-cvs commits and ghc-dev | chatter | | I think we already mostly have this. The separation (remembering | something I read off Trac I think,) was something like: | | * cvs-ghc mailing list: Prospective patches, automatically generated | build/commit emails, etc. | * glasgow-haskell-users mailing list: Developers and users of GHC | discussing issues of design, process, bugs or fielding questions et | cetera | | Doing some counting: looking at my email (which is gmail,) I have the | last 100 most recent email *threads* open from cvs-ghc. The 100th dates | to Nov 30th. I count about ~7 instances of non-build-or-commit-generated | discussions in this timeframe (that is, | ~7 email threads where the content wasn't just a build email, but a | follow up, or it was actually it's own thread.) Almost all of these | instances are related to patches or patches that were committed and some | talk happened about them. One (maybe two) were about build/test | failures. | | In contrast, for glasgow-haskell-users, for the past 100 threads: the | 100th thread dates to July 12th. However, the structure of all these | conversations is far, far more rich: just about every single thread | contains far more discussion, almost 100% of them containing at least | 2-3 emails. Some go as far as 20-70 emails deep, and many have several | handfuls of responses. This is just for the past few months but I've | been subscribed to both for years, so I'd say that sounds about right. | | From this, I would infer that most of the interesting discussion does, | in fact, happen on glasgow-haskell-users. There are perhaps fewer topics | at a less regular pace, but it's really here. In contrast, cvs-ghc is | mostly autogenerated stuff regular developers etc care about, with the | sprinkling of discussion, almost all of it for patches or failures it | seems. | | The thing is, I would think that most people who are trying to get into | routinely hacking on GHC would want to be subscribed to both anyway. | Personally I think commits are the most valuable asset I can see at a | glance. But Johan has discussed having Jenkins performance regressions | sent out in light of the recent performance Tsar work, and (some of) the | bots do report success nightly here. So for people who aren't submitting | a benign patch or doing one-off-work, you are probably at least going to | want that stuff on your radar. But even just looking at the work others | are doing can give you ideas, or give you familiarity with something | (it's even exciting to read patches | sometimes!) | | Overall I think the current separation is actually pretty good. Most of | the real meaty questions are asked here, and the developers routinely | sit on cvs-ghc to talk about patches or build failures and the like. | However, I do agree that sometimes you can miss out on interesting | discussion that happens there. Perhaps the rules could be changed so | that: | | * cvs-ghc is only for automatically-generated content like build emails, | regressions, and commits. | * glasgow-haskell-users is for everything else, including patch review | (which also happens on trac) or discussing failures/regressions. | | I don't know how attached I am to the current scheme, but perhaps this | sounds better to some, and I thought I could offer .02c having been | listening here for a while. :) | | On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 8:31 PM, Carter Schonwald | <carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote: | > hey all, | > It seems to me (and i've certainly heard other people echo this | > sentiment) | > that: ghc dev chatting gets buried in the huge volume of commit + | > build report emails, and that creates (perhaps) another barrier to | > involvement in ghc dev at the hobbyist (rather than part time/full | time ) scale? | > | > So my question for the community (and of course current ghc devs ) | > | > 1) do others agree that theres value in separating the two? | > | > 2) would this just be another use of the ghc-users list or would it | > be worth having a ghc-dev list? | > | > 3) most importantly, would the folks actively involved in ghc dev be | > willing/able to do so? | > | > That said, it does seem like the majority of the interesting ghc-dev | > chatter is on Trac issues, which is a good thing, though theres lots | > of interesting wee nuggets buried on the ghc-cvs list intermittently | > | > I hope this question makes sense for y'all! | > -Carter | > | > _______________________________________________ | > Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list | > Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org | > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users | > | | | | -- | Regards, | Austin | | _______________________________________________ | Glasgow-haskell-users mailing list | Glasgow-haskell-users@haskell.org | http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/glasgow-haskell-users