From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 26997 invoked by alias); 25 Mar 2004 13:34:30 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 26979 invoked from network); 25 Mar 2004 13:34:26 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO yosemite.airs.com) (209.128.65.135) by sources.redhat.com with SMTP; 25 Mar 2004 13:34:26 -0000 Received: (qmail 28964 invoked by uid 10); 25 Mar 2004 13:34:22 -0000 Received: (qmail 6498 invoked by uid 500); 25 Mar 2004 13:34:13 -0000 From: Ian Lance Taylor To: Bob Rossi Cc: Robert Dewar , gdbheads@gnu.org, gdb-patches@sources.redhat.com Subject: Re: [Gdbheads] A small patch case study, -file-list-exec-source-files References: <16456.65451.461753.66554@localhost.redhat.com> <20040306155700.GA9439@white> <20040311132508.GA2504@white> <20040323130900.GA17339@white> <40605C9F.2050700@gnat.com> <20040325043648.GA20454@white> <20040325055925.GS1104@gnat.com> <406279E4.3090903@gnat.com> <20040325124313.GA21101@white> Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 13:34:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: <20040325124313.GA21101@white> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2004-03/txt/msg00609.txt.bz2 Bob Rossi writes: > On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 01:19:16AM -0500, Robert Dewar wrote: > > Ian Lance Taylor wrote: > > > > >I want to note that this is only partially true. In fact there are a > > >number of people who are paid to work on gdb. > > > > Yes, but they aren't necessarily paid to work for the same goals as > > FSF maintenance. If I am working for company X which wants a reliable > > GDB for target Y, we may have zero interest in a patch that does not > > promote this goal. > > This was basically asking my question in a sentence. > > What incentive does a maintainer have in reviewing patches quickly? When I worked at Cygnus, part of my job was being the binutils maintainer. The details were unspecified by management, but the general idea was to keep the FSF happy with Cygnus and to get as much free work out of the community as possible. So that was an incentive to do effective patch review, beyond my own personal feelings. As I said, although Red Hat is the effective maintainer of gdb given that a plurality of gdb maintainers work for them, I don't know whether Red Hat is actually paying anybody to work toward these, or similar, goals. Robert, it's interesting to read your comments in light of the history of the gcc/egcs split. After all, Richard Kenner worked for GNAT at the time, and I believe that you did too. In my opinion, Kenner expressed the attitude which you express--in his case, stability for Ada was the preeminent goal. I think that attitude was a significant root cause of the gcc/egcs split. I think that tends to prove my earlier point in an extreme case: if you don't make an effort to encourage your volunteers, you lose them. Ian