Re: Rewriting the type system

Stan Shebs
2001-06-12T14:02:00Z

Daniel Berlin wrote:
>
> Jim Blandy <jimb@zwingli.cygnus.com> writes:
>
> > It's because, for whatever reason, you don't take the time to make
> > your changes correct.
>
> Now that's simply bullshit.

OK OK. For openers, let's agree not to do personal accusations and
profanity on the list. Flame each other in private please, it will
feel just as good and not waste everybody else's time.

> > Here we have, in the space of less than a dozen lines of code:
> >
> > - host == target assumptions (why are you applying `*' to
> > target-format data?)
> >
> > - sizeof (foo) assumptions (what is 8? what is 12?)
>
> Neat, but that code was written 2 years ago, when i was first starting
> gdb development.
> It was introduced into value_rtti_type, and copied in the gnuv3 rtti
> type because gnuv3-abi.c was based on gnuv2-abi.c, which was based on
> all that code.

Dan, if it's mistaken, it's mistaken; excuses and history aren't really
that interesting. We all have things we're not that proud of, myself
probably more than anybody. Let's fix them and go on to the next thing.

> > why should I bother to read your patches?
>
> Because as maintainer, it's your job?

You're right here, Dan. Everybody here talks about maintenance as
if it's some kind of signal honor, but no, it's just a responsibility,
like peer-reviewing scientific papers. You don't get to read the
title and say "Oh, Dr. Luser again, straight to the trash it goes."
Gotta read the whole thing and provide meaningful feedback, and
worse, you're expected to do it within a certain time period. The
worse the patch, the more work it will be to review.

> > You have an extensive history of reverted changes:

Jim, everybody who's worked extensively on GCC or GDB has a history
of reverted changes. It we waited until we were sure that each change
was perfect, progress would be appallingly slow. Every day the GCC
mainline gets patches that raise the hairs on the back of my neck,
and I don't relax until I've confirm they don't break the target for
which I'm responsible. Some of the patches do break GCC; the patch
gets fixed or reverted, and everybody moves on.

> [...on and on...]
> It's nice of you to try to imply that most of my patches are wrong, when they
> aren't.

Both of you are in the wrong here. Jim, you know as well as anyone
that the C++ symbol handling parts of GDB are not so neatly partitioned
that you can review symbol patches without knowing more than a bit about
C++, and Dan, you should be able to admit mistakes in your patches, fix
them and resubmit, rather than flaming the reviewer of the patch.

There is plenty of room to criticize both maintainer responsiveness
and patch quality without turning it into a spitting match, and I'm
disappointed to see the development process sink to this level.

Stan