From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 22175 invoked by alias); 2 Nov 2005 22:42:35 -0000 Mailing-List: contact gdb-patches-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-patches-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 22121 invoked by uid 22791); 2 Nov 2005 22:42:32 -0000 Received: from mx1.redhat.com (HELO mx1.redhat.com) (66.187.233.31) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Wed, 02 Nov 2005 22:42:32 +0000 Received: from int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (int-mx1.corp.redhat.com [172.16.52.254]) by mx1.redhat.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id jA2MgTaw025300; Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:42:29 -0500 Received: from devserv.devel.redhat.com (devserv.devel.redhat.com [172.16.58.1]) by int-mx1.corp.redhat.com (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id jA2MgTV29065; Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:42:29 -0500 Received: from theseus.home..redhat.com (vpn26-17.sfbay.redhat.com [172.16.26.17]) by devserv.devel.redhat.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id jA2MgQps029132; Wed, 2 Nov 2005 17:42:27 -0500 To: Eli Zaretskii Cc: Joel Brobecker , gdb-patches@sourceware.org Subject: Re: [commit] Mention VAX floating-point support in NEWS References: <200511010731.jA17VS9g027288@elgar.sibelius.xs4all.nl> <20051101225954.GB1107@adacore.com> <20051102051802.GC974@adacore.com> From: Jim Blandy Date: Wed, 02 Nov 2005 23:00:00 -0000 In-Reply-To: (Eli Zaretskii's message of "Wed, 02 Nov 2005 20:40:33 +0200") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-SW-Source: 2005-11/txt/msg00046.txt.bz2 Eli Zaretskii writes: > I fail to see how asking for approval of a 2-liner, and a day or two > of delay waiting for responses, could possibly affect productivity. > For that matter, I don't see how changes in NEWS can affect > development in the first place. It's three E-mails instead of one. It's another pending change to keep track of until the approval comes through. But this wasn't really your point: if I'm reading your messages right, you felt that 1) Joel was arguing that it was okay for Mark to sidestep established practices because it would be more productive if those practices where changed; and that 2) policies should be changed through discussion and agreement, not just by following the policies you wish you had. I'll buy the second thesis, but I doubt the first. Rather than seeing Joel's mail as a post-facto justification for Mark's commit, why not read it as a suggestion that we discuss and change the policy? Looking at the archives, I think it reads just as well both ways. I agree that NEWS is user-level documentation, and should be held to a higher standard of general comprehensibility than, say, ChangeLog entries. I think there's a lot to be said for having a single person in charge of editing the entries and keeping them grouped in some logical fashion; when everyone just tacks stuff on at the front, it gets kind of incoherent. Given that Eli has been consistently responsive to doc changes for years, I don't think this will be much of a bottleneck. Mark's change seems user-presentable and reasonably placed to me.