On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 11:44 PM, Petr Rockai <[email protected]> wrote:
> Dear Jason, > > first things first: you correctly point out below that darcs is a > volunteer-run project. I am no less a volunteer than anyone else. I will > probably also disappoint you, because I am not going to give you a very > detailed reply. > > Jason Dagit <[email protected]> writes: > > Who is "we" and where/when was this discussed? I heard this may have > > been discussed on IRC. Could you please provide links to the relevant > > discussion or summaries? > > > >> I'm proposing for the branch to live on > >> http://darcs.net/adventure. The current review team should stay > >> responsible for this branch, in addition to mainline (http://darcs.net > ). > > > > Okay. You're asking the review team to split their attention between > > the two? This sounds unpleasant given that as a volunteer run project > > we're perpetually understaffed and human attention is one of our most > > valuable resources. > > No, I am not asking anyone to do anything and I am certainly not bossing > around the rest of the team. I am offering my work to go into > darcs. Take it or leave it. It would be much more comfortable to fork -- > which is what will I do if the review team ends up disagreeing with the > branching. You don't have to like my code. You however can't stop me > from writing it. > If forking is what you would prefer, then fork it. Forks don't have to be a bad thing. That's actually what the adventure branch is. But, it's a fork where you're asking for the rest of the team to join you and asking for it to be blessed by darcs.net. You've implicitly involved me. Therefore, I want to discuss it. > > > How would those design experiments fit into your adventure branch? > > First you say you strongly disagree and now want to use it? There is a wide gap between conditional agreement and accepting/rejecting unconditionally. I'm also ASKING you how it would work if I went along with it. It's like a thought experiment. If you cared about my buy-in or participation, I would ask you to humor me and help me see how design ideas I have would fit with the adventure branch. > Well, what > can I say. You can submit your code for review of course. I outlined the > rules in my original mail, although they are subject to further review > team discussion. I'm trying to initiate that discussion. > > > Another thing to consider is that there are lots of arguments > > available, if you search for them on google, explaining why it's bad > > to throw away your code and start over. I really hope that's not or > > plan our. The type-witnesses were not easy to get integrated and yet > > we came up with a plan that let us put them in incrementally. What I > > don't know, because I missed out on the previous discussions, is why > > it is not feasible to refactor the current code to include lots of QC > > properties and other QA, and then refactor mercilessly? > > As ever, I'd appreciate if you did some research on your own part before > telling others how to do things. > ? > > > If we make correctness a priority from the BEGINNING of the adventure > > branch and have test driven development (or formal methods driven > > development) requirements on all code that goes in, I will feel quite > > happy about the branch. I'll be telling everyone to use it once its > > merged back in. I'll be singing the songs of darcs praise. Happy > > lispy will be happy :) > > I am not doing this to make anyone particularly happy. I suggest you > just write a formally verified and thoroughly tested darcs yourself. If > it turns out to work, it will probably find its users. > This is what Ian is doing with Camp. Also, If I wanted to write all my software by myself I wouldn't be collaborating with other darcs people. I'm not in the "throw things away and rewrite from scratch" group. I'm on the "let's pool together and improve what we have" side here. > > > If we instead, just do some testing at the end of the adventure branch > > using our current test suite then I'll be dragging my feet. I'll be > > quite afraid of the new branch and probably stick with its predecessor > > for a few stable release cycles. I'll be telling my friends to stay > > away from it too. Basically, I'll be sad. Don't make lispy sad :( > > No comment. > > > Therefore, I really hope we can use the adventure branch as a chance > > to make a cultural shift to evidence based correctness in all the > > patches that we accept to darcs. > > No. That is a pipe dream. At least for a couple of years yet. > Why? > > Yours, > Petr. > > PS: I think you may have forgotten to include your formal proofs with > your latest refactor. > I didn't forget. I certainly thought about it. We don't have such a culture in the darcs dev team. For refactors that did more than just move things around or fix warnings (say, the parser refactor), I did provide some amount of evidence. I reused our existing tests for the correctness parts and for performance I created a pathological case, timed it with criterion, and shared my benchmark code. Your reply has the tone that you feel attacked by my email. I sent my original message because I wanted to understand your plan. Now let's please discuss the plan. Jason
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