[yt-dev] Merging the unit refactor

[John Zuhone]

I guess I see both sides of this. Part of me wants to say that we
should mark a "stable-ish" alpha/beta/wherever we are version of 3.0
right before the unit refactoring, and encourage people who use 3.0
already to stop there for now. I suppose the objection to this is what
happens when bugs in that version are found, but we also have to think
about fixing potentially any bug now in light of the new units
functionality. I'm not myself going to be doing any development from
this point that doesn't assume the new field system and units, so I
don't have to change it later.

However, I am not particularly religious on what direction we should
go with this, so count me as a solid 0.

On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I've done a lot of thinking and talking with people about the idea of
> merging the units stuff into the mainline yt 3.0 branch.
>
> There are clear advantages to doing this: people who want to use SPH
> smoothing would be able to get it from the primary repository, PRs
> could be done through that repository, and the access to new things
> would be considerably easier.  More public development and review
> could happen; while the development already *is* public, it's out of
> view in my fork of yt.  This is not productive.
>
> But the development of yt is not the point of yt.  Using yt to enable
> scientific discovery is the point of yt.
>
> In many ways, the units refactor will enable more scientific
> discovery.  But it's not ready.  There are people using yt-3.0
> *already* (prime example: http://nickolas1.com/d3test2/ ) to do really
> cool science in ways that they can't with 2.x.  And they're doing this
> with a yt that *mostly* works like the 2.x branch, with the same field
> names and units and all of that, so the docs *mostly* apply.
>
> The units refactor, if merged in, would pull the rug *completely* out
> from under them.  And there's no safety net.  There's a web of YTEPs
> and PR comments and notebooks posted to mailing lists, but there's no
> place they can go and see, "Hey, this worked before, why isn't it
> now?"  And that's not okay.
>
> I've long put off writing documentation, and honestly, I could come up
> with lots more reasons to put it off.  But I started on Wednesday
> actually writing things down in earnest, and I think that needs to be
> the next big push, which I am committed to doing.  Yeah, it's not that
> fun always.  Especially since things *are* still changing.  But it's
> not fair -- and it is certainly not in the spirit of *extreme empathy*
> -- to just change things.
>
> But I also want new development to continue.  And so I want a balance
> to be struck.  I'd like to enumerate the items that are necessary for
> documentation so that we can merge it in.  I think these are as
> follows:
>
>  * All notebooks should be ported to the 3.0 docs and unit-refactor style
>  * API documentation has to be able to be compiled
>  * At a *bare* minimum, a list of stumbling blocks has to be included
> for moving to 3.0.  Britton and I have started on this and made very
> good progress.
>  * We need a bookmark or tag to be included in the repo *pre*-refactor.
>  * Cookbook recipes must work (I think they mostly do now)
>
> Things I don't think we need to do before merging:
>
>  * Completely update 100% of the narrative docs
>  * Document how to add smoothing fields, as I believe this API is in flux
>  * Describe the underlying methods in great, extensive detail for the
> new frontends
>  * A full, complete review of the docs like we did in advance of 2.6
>
> As a thought, why don't we treat documentation the way we treat code?
> Within the project, it seems we're comfortable committing and
> submitting work-in-progress code, but not docs.  In the past, perhaps
> this was because the PRs and repos were separate.  They aren't
> anymore.
>
> How does this proposal for the merge sound?  Please render an opinion,
> as I'd like to have this settled before the early part of next week.
>
> Thanks everyone,
>
> Matt
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-- 
John ZuHone

Postdoctoral Researcher
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

jzuhone at gmail.com
john.zuhone at nasa.gov