Project Policies

On Fri, Sep 09, 2016 at 03:33:58PM +0200, Vik Fearing wrote:

I often see mention of project policies for various things (the one
triggering this email is in commit 967a7b0).

Where can I find documentation for these policies?

In PostgreSQL community jargon, referring to something as "project policy"
essentially asserts that departures from the practice in question warrant
explicit discussion and acceptance. This term doesn't carry the formality
that the word "policy" carries in most settings.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/source.html documents some
project policies. Certain code comments and README text, such as
src/backend/access/transam/README section "Write-Ahead Log Coding", are
project policies. Policy assertions in the editable source carry more weight
than assertions in email or commit messages. Sometimes, popularity creates a
de facto policy; witness the project policy against "const static":

$ git grep 'static const' | wc -l
5404
$ git grep 'const static' | wc -l
0

Most project policies remain undocumented, and there's no well-defined
boundary between project policy and mere popular acceptance.

nm

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