- Promote Stefan Behnel.
- Do not promote Stefan Behnel.
0 voters
Stefan is well known as a core developer of Cython and lxml. He contributed to CPython at least since 2010.
(Undecided voter here.)
How will being able to merge pull requests and sponsor PEPs help Stefan improve CPython? I haven’t noticed that appearing to be a restriction on his contributions, but maybe I’ve been working in other areas? (I’m mainly focused on Windows, embedding and security, so there are plenty of parts of the stdlib and language design that I may have missed his work.)
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Is your question generic or specific to Stefan? Any merge or coredev action a new coredev does is either a merge or action that would not have happened or a merge that frees up time for the older coredev who would have done it.
It’s specific, since this is a specific thread. But in general I’d like to see a bit of rationale for any nomination. If the rationale is just “a warm body to click Merge” then I’d like to at least be told why they’re better than blindly trusting in CI. I assume most people are better than CI, but I’d really prefer an area of specialty or ownership that will help motivate them to remain active.
Stefan replied to me by email (since he can’t post here yet) and indicated he’d like to take on maintenance of the XML modules. I’m okay with that as a rationale (along with what I already know of his written contributions), so I voted +1.
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Serhiy wrote a longer message on python-committers which has been followed by a few replies:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2019-March/006634.html
I voted +1. Copy of my email to python-committers:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2019-March/006641.html
Serhiy Storchaka:
I discussed with Stefan this week and I told him that I was surprised that he is not a core developer yet. I didn’t follow Stefan’s recent work, so I didn’t feel able to propose him (and I am already proposing another Stéphane, Stéphane Wirtel, this week :-)). It seems like Serhiy offers to propose to promote him, good! Stefan has my +1 (I voted at discuss.python.org).
Cython became a major project in the Python community (see the PSF award). I noticed that sometimes Cython is slow to be updated to support new Python changes (like the new way to store exceptions in PyThreadState of Python 3.7).
It became frequent that major projects like numpy fail to be build on “python nightly” because Cython doesn’t work on the master branch of Python.
I don’t expect Stefan to be suddenly more active upstream in term of fixing random Python issues. I would like to see Stefan working more closely with developers who are modifying Python internals. For example, the change moving PyInterpreterState to the internal API (Include/internal). If such change breaks Cython, it would help to see the authors of such changes helping Stefan to fix Cython. Or at least, Stefan notify the authors. Slowly, I hope that Cython will collaborate more with Python upstream.
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Thanks for the detail, but it doesn’t seem to justify giving permission to modify CPython. Plenty of people follow the project changes without being able to commit directly. The commit bit isn’t a award for doing other projects - that’s what the PSF award is for.
Having some area of CPython to own, maintain and enhance does justify the nomination, and I’m now convinced that this applies here. There’s no need to try to justify commit rights with irrelevant reasoning.
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@storchaka: when do you plan to close the vote? I suggest to at least include next weekend (as Brett wrote on python-committers, so core devs only have a look at Python things during the weekend).
I hope that Stefan could be the next maintainer of the xml.etree package (and maybe other XML modules). This requires to be a core developer, right?
I hope also on closer collaboration with Cython.
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I planned to closer it after a week or like. Or when the Steering Council say “enough”. The vote itself does not determine granting core developer right. It just gives some information to the Steering Council which makes a decision.
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Yep, and all that was missing was to put this part in the original message, perhaps with some references for past work in that area or on that module.
I don’t believe that necessarily will happen by giving someone commit rights, but I hope it does!
Does Stefan want to do this? Make it clear that you’ve asked about becoming a core dev. and gotten a positive agreement on initial roles if promoted.
As worded “I hope that” could be read to imply that we’re voting on promoting someone into a role and assumed maintainer of something without their knowledge or consent. 
Big +1 from me. I’ve interacted with Stefan a few times about both Cython and CPython via email or on GitHub. He’s well qualified to become a core dev.
@storchaka: Should the vote be closed now?
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Yes. I’ll wrote a summary.
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And Stefan is now a core dev!
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