Re: [maint] The GDB maintenance process

Daniel Berlin
2003-02-20T16:31:24Z

On Thursday, February 20, 2003, at 11:23 AM, Andrew Cagney wrote:

> Daniel Berlin,
>
> You and your track record are a case in point for why it is important
> to for GDB developers to both receive and respect peer review. I find
> it extreamly ironic that you, of all people, should be arguing that
> the system is stifling.
>
> Yes, the system was a barrier to you but that was for a very good
> reason. Please don't try to use yourself as the sob story. The only
> real mistake in your case was to not step in earlier and see you given
> the boot.

Oh, and just to avoid you rewriting history, you'll note i quit,
because Jim refused to even review my patches for months, because he
felt they were ugly. Which of course, regardless of whether they *are*
ugly or not, doesn't change the fact that they are still supposed to be
reviewed, and the reviews are supposed to be useful. Nobody "booted"
me.
Not that facts would have much influence on your viewpoint.

I've changed since I worked on GDB. I'll happily admit i submitted
tons of crappy code to GDB. But it wasn't reviewed anyway. It's only
when i went to work on GCC, and actually got reviews of crappy patches
telling me why they were crappy *constructively* (by people who
actually clearly understood the code in question), rather than
*destructively* (or by raising points that were completely irrelevant),
that I actually became a better coder.

GDB as a project isn't good to contributors. It's processes are not
helpful in maintaining or nurturing a community of maintainers and
future maintainers. Can you point to anyone who will take over GDB
when the current maintainers are gone? In GCC, I can. You guys have
basically trashed/ignored anyone who has had any potential.

I grew up Andrew.
Maybe you and GDB should too?

> Andrew

>