[Scummvm-devel] Understaffing (Was: What is happening to the ScummVM team?)
Max Horn
max at quendi.de
Fri Feb 13 02:48:55 CET 2009
Hi there,
regarding release / code quality: I concur, things seem to have gone
downhill when it comes to testing coverage, code/release quality, and
also availability of ports / testing of ports before the release.
In short, the reason for that seems to be understaffing / lack of time
of people.
It starts at the top: The two team leads (eugene and me) are super-
busy with life outside ScummVM, leading to a certain regretable lack
in leadership. And in bug triage. It might be nice to add 1-2 new
people to the head of ScummVM. We'd need somebody very active and able
to fill in the leadership role. Management is understaffed resp.
existing staff lacks time.
It continues with engine maintanance: Not all our engines are being
very actively maintained. Right now, there is *nobody* assigned to BS1
(though I'd hope that the engine is stable enough to work well
anyway). Regarding e.g. the MM v2 bugs: 1-2 years ago I probably would
have already fixed those, as it is, I don't have time (other things
have higher priority for me) to even start debugging them. There are
some other people actively working on SCUMM, luckily, but I am not
sure how interested/equipped they are in/for fixing bugs in MM... The
engine teams are understaffed resp. existing staff lacks time.
It leads (but doesn't stop at) ports, where once again some ports
won't make it, for other ports we have heard little to nothing from
their porters. We certainly could stand getting some new people aboard
here! People like Chrilith, Neil, Kostas, etc. are working alone on
their ports, and the testing alone puts a huge burden on them. Port
teams are understaffed resp. existing staff lacks time.
I'll reply to the other point in another mail, as this is IMHO getting
difficult to track otherwise. :-)
Cheers,
Max
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