From: David Alan Black <dblack@...>
Date: 2002-01-13T03:42:50+09:00
Subject: RCRCR

Hello --

Yes, a Ruby Change Request Change Request.

It seems to me that RCRs fall into several categories, and that those
categories are different enough from each other that it would be worth
turning them into different things.  The RCR label, in my view, is
flattening things out to much; there's a big difference, say, between
wanting #lstrip added to String and wanting method overloading based
on number of arguments.

And I don't just mean differences as to the merits of the various
requests.  I mean the type of request that's involved, the kind of
impact it would have on the language (not just the amount of impact,
but specifically the kind of impact -- mainly whether it's
code-breaking or not), and the alternatives in the face of a rejected
request (some requested changes being quite easily expressed as code
snippets, others less easily).

Here's a sample breakout of the current RCR space into three different
types of request:


  Ruby Alteration Request

    Actual language-level change to a current feature of Ruby.  Things
    like changing number of args to a method, changing what's returned
    by methods, etc.  May break code.


  Ruby Enhancement Request

    The addition of something new to Ruby.  Will not break code;
    purely additive.  Could be a whole new method, or some new (but
    100% backward compatible) behavior by a method.


  Ruby Optimization Request

    Something invisible to the Ruby programmer.  Will not break code;
    pure refactoring of the source and/or standard distribution.
    Probably the least frequent type of request, but still important
    to have as a category.


I know that I'm using the word "alteration" in a somewhat specialized
sense in the first one, when in fact they're all "alterations" of a
kind.  But whatever the term... the main point would be to trade in
the current one-label RCR structure for something that's more
reflective of the very different natures of what's being R'ed :-)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@candle.superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav