Rust libz blitz!

I created a cookbook issue for flate2 / tar recipes: https://github.com/brson/rust-cookbook/issues/185

Also for bitflags: https://github.com/brson/rust-cookbook/issues/190

Due to a scheduling conflict I bumped mio to 8/15, and moved gcc up to 7/11.

Since we’re trying to open evaluations one month ahead of time, that means @burntsushi will need to open the gcc thread next week.

walkdir is scheduled for next Tuesday. Everything ready to go @KodrAus? Need any help still?

@brson Yep, everything should be good to go. But any extra input is always appreciated :slight_smile:

I added rayon and mime to on-deck evaluations. rayon is about ready for 1.0, and very popular. mime also gets around a lot and libs team has expressed interest. I demoted env_logger to out-of-band evaluations, as I don’t see the libs team revisiting logging any time soon. I’m still hopeful to get some such evaluations going soon.

The csv crate is also about ready for 1.0, and would be worthy of review. As a @burntsushi crate it’s going to be super high quality. I’m a little iffy about whether it is within the present mandate of this project, though certainly csv is a common format, and is sometimes supported by standard libraries.

RE csv: It’s at 1.0.0-beta.3 right now, which was intentional so that I could still make breaking changes. My plan is to probably get 1.0 out before the end of the year. I agree with your concerns @brson though, but I just wanted to put this out there!

I would like to mention that @kbknapp has started a libz Blitz Style overhaul for clap-rs some time ago :thumbsup:

@brson Were we adding same_file as an out-of-band crate?

I’m happy to kick that off next week, it shouldn’t block walkdir since we’re removing the re-export.

@KodrAus Yes let’s add same_file to out-of-band.

@budziq oh cool, thanks for the heads-up!

I’m just going through and triaging stuff and realized I did not post a status update last week! Sorry about that. I will do two weeks in the next report.

Rust Libz Blitz status update 2017-06-15

Ok, this is an update of the last two weeks.

The big event this time was that @KodrAus finished the walkdir evaluation, and it went really well. He filed a bunch of very well-documented issues that are all still open and want to be closed.

The error-chain evaluation is open too and in need of help completing the guidelines checklist and brainstorming ideas for cookbook recipes. There’s also a fair bit of discussion on that thread about the error-chain design. If you have opinions don’t hesitate to jump in.

Coming up we’ll expect @burntsushi to get the gcc evaluation started soon, and for me to schedule out the next few crates after that.

I also hope to start a push for getting actual 1.0 crates released, and to motivate that with a “1.0 achievements” thread of some kind, where any crate author can post their crate that meets some qualifications to the best of their determination.

It was another really productive week. Thanks to everybody who chipped in!

url

log

reqwest

cookbook

help wanted

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I updated the evaluation template to reflect the format used in the latest evaluation.

I’ve scheduled rayon for 8/29 cc @nikomatsakis

That leaves 3 more slots for us to fill to fulfill our scheduled 16 crates for the year. I am not sure yet what will happen schedule-wise after that, but probably the focus will be on actually getting those 1.0 version bumps so we have something to show for ourselves at the end of the year. I think though that we will probably maintain some kind of steady schedule. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’m also looking at more crates for the “out-of-band” crate selection, that is crates we can run evaluations on at any time, but that the libs team is not going to conduct an entire meeting about. I’ll fill out that list a bit, and contact authors to get consent to review their crates.

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These were rebases of PRs by @AndyGauge and @seanmonstar.

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cc @cuviper

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@cuviper I didn’t realize you had done so much on rayon. Can you join the libs meeting on 8/29, 1 PM PST?

@brson Sure, I’ll be there, thanks!

To account for our accomplishments at the end of the year, I’ve put together a spreadsheet tracking the contributions to both crates and the cookbook, by individual contributor. Note the pivot table sheets that sum up contributions.

So far it counts fixes to 99 crate issues, and 32 cookbook recipes. That’s pretty great!

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OK, I’ve taken the bold step of scheduling rand for 7/25 (which means we have to kick-start that evaluation next week).

I’m going to suggest that our disposition here with rand should be to polish it and release 1.0, limiting ambitious design changes. rand has been the subject of a lot of criticism over the years, and has suffered from not having a dedicated maintainer, but rand is also the best way we have to get random numbers today, and it’s just fine at that. There’s going to be a strong temptation to not settle on good enough, and demand a complete redesign, but the fact is that has not happened in the years people have been wanting it. There’s plenty we can do to improve the crate we actually have, and we should do that.

So let’s do a thorough review, and be cognizant of scoping the resultant work to what we can reasonably accomplish now, and what we can accomplish later.

Perhaps getting out a limited-ambition rand 1.0 will inspire someone to come along and design a better rand, and that can become rand 2.0, or it will deprecate rand. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.

We need somebody to lead this evaluation. Anybody interested?

cc @bstrie I know you’ve talked about working on rand recently.

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I don't think this is true at all. I spent significant amount of time documenting just a subset of the serious deficiencies with its design already: Tracking issue for stabilizing randomness · Issue #27703 · rust-lang/rust · GitHub.

It's already done better in ring.

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I’ve also triaged the list of “out-of-band” evaluations for crates that are ready to be evaluated. They are updated in the op and also listed here along with their maintainers.

These are important crates that for whatever reason the libs team is unlikely to dedicate one of their meetings to. But they still deserve the same polish and review that we pride ourselves on.

This list is composed of crates who’s authors have already assented to having their crates scrutinized as part of the libz blitz. I am additionally contacting the authors of a few others crates.

Volunteers are needed to lead these evaluations. If you are interested say so on this thread.

The process for leading an evaluation is roughly:

  • Add the crate to the OP of this thread, either to 'crate schedule’ if it’s going to a libs team meeting, or to ‘other crate evaluations’, for ‘out-of-band’ crate evalautions (like these).
  • Open an internals thread using the evaluation template, following the example of previous evaluations. Convert the op to a wiki with the wrench icon in the bottom right set of options.
  • Open an issue against rust-cookbook to brainstorm examples.
  • Copy the API guidelines checklist to an etherad, linked from the evaluation op.
  • Encourage contributors to fill out sections of the guidelines checklist, to make free-form observations on thread, and suggest cookbook examples.
  • As guidelines are completed, make notes in the op about potential issues to file against the crate once the evaluation is complete, and matters that need more discussion.
  • Work with the crate author to note pre-existing issues that block a 1.0 release.
  • After a few weeks, organize the issues and discussion points. Work with the author and community to agree on a set of resolutions and file them as issues on the crate repository, linked to a single tracking issue. Follow existing examples.
  • Periodically follow up on the cookbook and crate tracking issues to help drive them to completion.

Hm, this might sound like a big task, and it kinda is, but it’s important work, and so far has resulted in valuable improvements and contributions.