[yt-dev] proposal for merging in the unitrefactor and rebranding

[Matthew Turk]

On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 12:56 PM, Nathan Goldbaum <nathan12343 at gmail.com> wrote:
> +1
>
> The documentation has also come a long way since this topic was last
> discussed on the list.

I agree, and I think it's nearing the "mergable" state.  Not
releasable, but mergable.

>
>
> On Wednesday, March 12, 2014, Sam Skillman <samskillman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> +1
>>
>> On Mar 12, 2014 7:39 AM, "John ZuHone" <jzuhone at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> +1
>>
>> On Mar 12, 2014, at 9:11 AM, Matthew Turk <matthewturk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, Mar 12, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Britton Smith <brittonsmith at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >> Hi all,
>> >>
>> >> There are two major changes coming soon for yt-3.0 as we march our way
>> >> to an
>> >> official release.  These are the unitrefactor and the rebranding.  The
>> >> unitrefactor adds symbolically expressed, convertible units to all
>> >> fields
>> >> and scalars in yt.  The rebranding is a rethinking of some of yt's
>> >> conceptual entities (such as thinking of a "dataset" instead of a
>> >> "parameter
>> >> file", an "indexer" instead of a "hierarchy", etc.) and attempt to
>> >> de-astro
>> >> the infrastructure as we start to think about working with other
>> >> sciences.
>> >> The unitrefactor also contains some rebranding efforts in the form of
>> >> field
>> >> renaming (e.g., "Density" becoming "density"), so these changes are
>> >> somewhat
>> >> linked.
>> >>
>> >> What we need to figure out is the process by which these changes are
>> >> merged
>> >> into the yt-3.0 branch of the main repo (yt_analysis).  In my opinion,
>> >> the
>> >> primary issues are the following:
>> >>
>> >> 1. Develop is cumbersome because it is taking place within Matt's fork,
>> >> meaning that all contributors have to fork his fork and issue PRs to
>> >> that.
>> >> This is annoying because one has to maintain two forks and because most
>> >> people aren't getting notified of PRs issued to Matt's fork.
>> >>
>> >> 2. Experience has shown that the only way to identify all the bugs is
>> >> by
>> >> actually attempting to use the code to do Real Stuff.  What this means
>> >> is we
>> >> need all the frontends represented and people putting the various
>> >> functionality and analysis modules to use.  I think for most people,
>> >> having
>> >> to pull changes in from an external repo and perform various mercurial
>> >> magic
>> >> just to test changes is a bridge to far.  We need to lower the barrier
>> >> to
>> >> entry.
>> >>
>> >> 3. There is still a good amount of documentation, testing, polishing,
>> >> etc
>> >> before this can be called stable.  Even though yt-3.0 is still
>> >> officially
>> >> Under Development, a number of people are using it to do actual things
>> >> and
>> >> so it is unreasonable to just land this on them without full
>> >> documentation
>> >> and with such a high likelihood that it will break things.
>> >>
>> >> I propose that the unitrefactor and rebranding work be pulled into the
>> >> main
>> >> repository in an "experimental" bookmark.  I think this will a)
>> >> streamline
>> >> development and make it more visible to everyone, b) lower the barrier
>> >> to
>> >> trying it out for people so we can actually get everything tested and
>> >> working, and c) not disrupt the workflow of the current users of
>> >> yt-3.0.  I
>> >> also think this is the quickest way of satisfying everyone in terms of
>> >> getting all of the necessary documentation written as it makes the
>> >> development significantly more open and accessible.
>> >>
>> >> For more info on what needs to be done on both of these fronts and for
>> >> yt-3.0 in general, see the trello boards:
>> >> https://trello.com/yt_analysis
>> >>
>> >> Can we get a +/-1 on this?
>> >
>> > +1, for all of these reasons.
>> >
>> > I'm really keen to get things merged in, but nervous -- for the
>> > reasons you note.
>> >
>> > -Matt
>> >
>> >>
>> >> Britton
>> >>
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>> >>
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>> >
>
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