[Gossip-dev] Re: [Telepathy] Telepathy Status

[Jimen Ching]

On Thu, 12 Oct 2006, Martyn Russell wrote:
> As some indication of how long these things take, we (Micke and I) spent
> the best part of 3 months refactoring the code to add libgossip and make
> the middle-ware of Gossip generic enough for this sort of Technology
> (Telepathy). I and others have also spent > 6 months writing the UI to
> work with n+1 accounts in the chat rooms window, the accounts window,
> the personal information window, the add contact window, etc. This is
> just adding n+1 accounts, imagine how long it will take to add n+1
> account types given that they also don't all operate in one way
> (consider IRC and Jabber).

Hmm, this worries me some.  I might have not understood how Telepathy 
works, but I've always assume Telepathy handles these account issues 
already.

If how Gossip handles accounts and how Telepathy handles accounts are 
different, I suspect this GossipAccount discussion will continue for a few 
more weeks.

> What is the point in having a schedule if the work input is not
> consistent enough to guarantee such a schedule could be kept to?

Having a schedule helps you track where you are and how far you have to 
go.  A schedule is just a plan, a todo list, etc.  I'm pretty sure you 
have such a schedule/plan/list.  It's probably only for the short term, 
and isn't written down.  I'm merely suggesting such a list be created, so 
everyone knows their part in reaching a goal.

> are really basic and a necessity for Gossip) and there will be bugs. If
> you consider that it might take 3 months for Telepathy to get to a place
> where they support all the key features of Gossip now and that it would
> be stable by then too, that leaves the Gossip team (of 2/3 people plus 2
> volunteers) 3 months to implement all the backend, all multi protocol UI
> updates and any fixes in between. This leaves no time for any testing
> what so ever.

If you're trying to convince me that there are lots of work to be done, 
you don't have to do that.  As I look through the code, I can see there 
are work to be done.  But the qoute above seems to imply things need to be 
done serially.  I.e. Telepathy needs to stabilize before work on Gossip 
can begin.  I'm not sure this is true.  If work progress in parallel, 
based on features, it should be possible to reach the same goal at the 
same time.

> replace what we currently have in Gossip in 6 months time - perhaps I
> will be wrong, but we certainly won't have time to implement the UI in
> Gossip in that time frame.

I'm not sure I understand this statement, and perhaps a schedule or todo 
list would help me.  Is there a plan to make significant changes to the 
UI?  I thought the plan was to use the existing UI with Telepathy.  The 
issue with the Account parameters is limited to a specific area.  Is this 
not true?

I know this thread is taking time away from important bug fixing and 
feature enhancements.  But I get the feeling that a lack of a plan is 
what's preventing significant progress.  For example, Eitan did a lot of 
work to create a telepathy layer.  Xavier came into the picture and moved 
all of that into the protocol subdir.  Now, there's a suggestion of 
merging telepathy and libgossip (because they are basically doing the same 
task, abstracting the protocol).  Eitan had this in mind from the 
beginning.  So we're just moving back-and-forth.  Some planning could have 
prevented all this.

A few days spent on planning will save weeks of work that may prove to be 
unnecessary.  I can only offer this advice.  But personal experience has 
proven this statement to be true.  Please take some time to consider it.

--jc
-- 
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org