Re: Rewriting the type system

Daniel Berlin
2001-06-11T11:43:00Z

Jim Blandy <jimb@zwingli.cygnus.com> writes:

> Daniel Berlin <dan@cgsoftware.com> writes:
>> While i'm redoing the type system, I was just about to ask a java
>> person the following:
>> in jv-lang.c, in java_array_type, it says "FIXME: This is bogus! Java
>> arrays are not gdb arrays!".
>>
>> Could you please point me to where i can find out what java arrays
>> *are*, so i can make a type structure for them (the new typesystem is
>> a hierarchy of structs, rather than a single type struct. This means
>> whatever java arrays *are*, can easily be represented and handled,
>> with no fuss or muss).
>
> If you plan to submit a large, pervasive change for GDB, you will want
> to first explaing your change in detail on gdb@sources.redhat.com.
Errr, I did, a *long* time ago.

> The people who will approve or reject your patch read that list, and
> will almost certainly have some comments on the design.
They did.

> By making
> sure the fundamental design of your change meets their requirements
> *before* you invest the time to turn your ideas into a patch, you may
> avoid having to rewrite the change from scratch.

Not a problem. By the time the patch gets reviewed, it'll be rewritten anyway.
Even the very simple patch to add the misc obstack to the objfiles,
and stop putting things in the psymbol obstack that don't belong, from
May 29th, hasn't been reviewed yet.
Hell, the simple bcache change i submitted last year (updating the
starting constant, fix the indenting) still hasn't
been reviewed.

Jim, GDB development is moving a lot slower than it should. If
someone told me, after just rewriting the typesystem, that i needed to
redo it from scratch, i'd probably just start making my own GDB
releases instead (in effect, forking GDB). Not out of spite or
anything, just so i could get stuff done without having to keep track
of tons of patches that go months without review.

I'm now up to 15 people who ask me for my current tree weekly/monthly
(which contains all my outstanding patches that haven't been
reviewed) instead of downloading cvs.

This, IMHO, is amazingly silly. The fact that the patches wait long
enough for others to notice, and get fed up enough with the current
state to ask me for the tree tells me something is very wrong here.

I usually wait a week before tarring up the tree, in hopes that maybe,
just maybe, someone will review whatever patches they are hoping to
get out of it.

Hasn't happened yet.

--Dan
--
"One time I went to a museum where all the work in the museum had
been done by children. They had all the paintings up on
refrigerators.
"-Steven Wright