[webkit-dev] Terminology: Could we change 'roll out' to 'roll back'?

[Maciej Stachowiak]

I agree this usage of “roll out” is potentially confusing.

I think people say “roll out” for the symmetry to “check in”. It also creates the convenient term “roll back in” for when a rollout is undone.

Personally, I think we should say “revert” and avoid use of roll-phrases entirely. “unrevert” isn’t quite as natural as “roll back in”, but it’s good enough. Or you could say “re-land”.

Regards,
Maciej

> On Mar 6, 2020, at 6:14 PM, Kirsling, Ross <Ross.Kirsling at sony.com> wrote:
> 
> Greetings WebKittens,
>  
> Late on Friday seems like a good time for a terminological debate (��), so I’d like to propose we revisit one of the strangest items of WebKit-specific terminology: the phrase ‘roll out’.
>  
> In our industry, the typical meaning of the phrase ‘roll out’ is, of course, ‘deploy’ or ‘launch’; this corresponds with the colloquial usage of ‘roll out’ to mean ‘depart (for a destination)’. In WebKit, we use ‘roll out’ to mean the exact opposite, ‘revert’ or ‘roll back’.
>  
> In terms of metaphors: The typical meaning of ‘roll out’ is synonymous with ‘roll forward’, hence the opposite being ‘roll back’. The way that I came to explain to myself and others what WebKit means by ‘roll out’ is that it’s movement along the other axis. There is a tree (SVN trunk) which is built up from disc-shaped slices (revisions), and these slices are rolled sideways in and out of the tree. Needless to say, this is not obvious to a newcomer, and it’s not even accurate to how SVN works—rollouts don’t remove an old revision, they add a new revision to perform the revert!
>  
> This term is confusing enough for native English speakers outside our community, let alone non-natives (since phrasal verbs are notoriously tricky as it is). Having heard complaints about this from people in both of these groups within the last few weeks, I hereby propose that we start using ‘roll back’ instead. Given the string similarity between the two, I hope that this will be a relatively easy change to enact, if folks are onboard with it.
>  
> Thanks for your consideration!
>  
> Ross
> _______________________________________________
> webkit-dev mailing list
> webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org <mailto:webkit-dev at lists.webkit.org>
> https://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev <https://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/attachments/20200306/446d087e/attachment.htm>