APE 1: Proposal filename should be descriptive (naming chaos fix 1)

[pllim]

Motivation: Asking people to put a number in APE proposal filename too early and then changing the number last minute can cause merge conflict (for another open APE proposal) and confusion (for everyone else).

Case study:

• 87 (advertised as APE 24 for many months but merged as APE 22)

• 85 (advertised as APE 22 that can now never be)

But why are we renaming? To prevent gaps in accepted APE listing (e.g., the still open #14 and the missing APE 11 in the list of accepted APEs).

Proposed solution: Update APE 1 to ask APE proposal authors to not use a number at all. Now, the numbering will only be assigned at merge time by a CoCo member doing the merge.

Pros: No more numbering confusion or gaps. Cons: Renaming a file last minute makes for ugly commit history and weird git blame. Also cannot say "APE short-number" in discussions until after it is accepted.

Alternative:

• 97

More discussion: https://groups.google.com/g/astropy-dev/c/7Tnx7S3aGP4

[bsipocz]

PEPs have gaps in them, NEPs, too (if you consider the deferred or under consideration numbers a gap), so I don't see why it would be a big issue to have gaps, IMO the renaming is more confusing.

[pllim]

Re: https://github.com/astropy/astropy-APEs/pull/96#issuecomment-1927890064

I agree. At the CoCo meeting today, this was discussed. I took on the action item to open 2 competing solutions (this and #97) and I will send out both to astropy-dev list for discussions.

[mhvk]

Also see no problem with gaps, so downvoted this one and upvoted #97.

[pllim]

No support for this one, so closing.