Failing in Public When Doing Open Source Is Not the End of the World
Here's a recap of a few things that went wrong around pushing invalid Python packages while maintaining Flask-DebugToolbar.
Quick Jump: Video Recap of Events
I recently became a maintainer for Flask-DebugToolbar to help create and review PRs, cut releases and generally answer questions when I can.
Within 24 hours of that happening 2 broken releases were pushed to PyPi and a third release was pushed with a mislabeled version number. Most of these things happened from not doing due diligence in the PR review process and also not fully understanding the implications of yanked packages on PyPi.
I figured this type of video is worth making to remind anyone out there that everyone is human and mistakes happen. It’s not the end of the world. This resulted in the latest version of the package not working for a few hours and then everything worked in the end.
I’m actually happy these mistakes were made because I learned something new and it was a good reminder that glancing over a pull request without testing it shouldn’t be the norm. I’ve also internalized a few checklist items whenever I’m about to publish a new package. These items apply to publishing any package too, not just Python packages.
Video Recap of Events
Timestamps
- 0:25 – How I became a maintainer
- 2:37 – Not doing due diligence when reviewing PRs
- 6:45 – Yanking packages from PyPi since they didn’t work
- 10:14 – Fixing the package so the necessary files are included
- 14:10 – An oversight when setting the package version
- 16:45 – Finally, it all works
Reference Links
What was the last thing that went wrong in a project you worked on? Let us know!