[Catalyst] Re: Why does $c->stats require -Debug flag?

[Aristotle Pagaltzis]

* Jonathan Rockway <jon at jrock.us> [2008-04-24 11:25]:
> * On Thu, Apr 24 2008, Jon Schutz wrote:
> > No problems, if that's what the Catalyst standard says; I
> > must have missed it. Where is it? I'd like to consult it on
> > a number of matters... please post the link.
> 
> Basically it's more of a "zeitgeist" than an actual document.
> There are some things that the community has decided and "just
> do".

That’s the sort of feel-good bollocks I’d expect to read on a
Rails hype blog, not here. Unspoken rules and gut feel are no way
to run a community. Catalyst suffers from this in general: way
too little is written down, much less in any systematic fashion.

This is not a personal criticism of anyone in particular – I have
not done anything yet to help the situation myself either. But
let’s please not pretend the status quo is rainbows and ponies.

> One is not breaking things or adding features between point
> releases. We've fucked this up a number of times, but that
> doesn't really matter, the point is we try to fix our mistakes.
> Compare this to other frameworks that just break things and say
> "fuck you".

Yes, it’s a good rule and good lesson.

But expecting others, particularly the many users every free
software product has who use it without interacting with its
community, to pick up the unspoken rules of the cabal without
any cues or direction is delusional.

Partly the compat problems with the interface we’re talking about
arised precisely because API stability conventions were unspoken
rule, and people arrived at wildly different interpretations of
the silence of the docs.

There is lots of room for improvement here.

Regards,
-- 
Aristotle Pagaltzis // <http://plasmasturm.org/>