Dismantle, describe, and incorporate the contents of the conch session branch piecemeal

New submission from glyph <[email protected]>:

#2710 ended in an unfortunate failure condition, where reviewers (including myself) agreed that the branch was just too big and too nebulously described to review and to incorporate.  However, the branch probably has a lot of valuable work in it and we shouldn't let that be lost.

I'd like this ticket to track that work, and to be closed when nothing worthwhile of value remains to be extracted.  ("of value" can be defined by whoever volunteers to do the work, by how much they're willing to do.)  However, I'd also like to provide some practical advice on how to accomplish this and a technique for tracking progress that might allow more than one person to contribute:

  * start by merging the session branch forward into a branch with this ticket number instead
  * then, for each beneficial, separable thing in the branch:
    * identify one feature, bugfix, or structural improvement
    * describe it clearly on a ticket
    * `chbranch` to this branch
    * `mkbranch` a new branch for the new feature
    * In your working copy, revert all the hunks that are not related to the specific feature being described
    * commit that, and go through the review process with that change.
    * once that has successfully made it through review, merge the branch associated with ''this'' ticket forward, and resolve the conflicts created by the merge of the smaller feature.  This should result in a new, smaller branch without those changes.

Unlike a normal branch, whose goal is to get merged to trunk, the ultimate goal of this branch will be to get deleted.  However, in the meanwhile, it will serve as a resource for anyone interested in doing some conch work to look at and try to identify useful features.  As the branch gets smaller, discrete units of functionality should become easier to identify, and therefore more people can contribute.


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Type     : enhancement
Component: conch
Keywords : 
Priority : normal
Nosy     : 
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http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/3898