Yes, the statements I made are a bit exaggerated.  That was to bring out a 
little more discussion on balance of maintenance vs enhancement.

In my case, I am suggesting fixes because I have groovy-eclipse setup and this 
gives me a chance to make some small patches to groovy-core and see if they fix 
the problems I run into.  For me to submit a PR to groovy-core, I would need to 
get that entire project setup and get familiarized with the build and test 
cycle.  And then how would I decide how much time to spend trying to improve 
groovy-eclipse vs. groovy-core.  I felt that reporting issues and submitting 
diffs/patches would be sufficient.


Here are my top 3 from my bugs list:
GROOVY-8509 error for call to protected method from same package
GROOVY-8063 Type annotation value referencing inner class is not properly scoped
GROOVY-7975 Use of static final field in an annotation element causes compile 
errors

-----Original Message-----
From: Jochen Theodorou [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2018 7:37 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: GROOVY-8527: Enhance import aliasing to an alias with a package 
name

On 04.04.2018 21:38, [email protected] wrote:
>>> [...]I have submitted over 20 bugs in the past months for existing 
>>> features that do not mix well with eachother or are not completely 
>>> implemented and yet I feel the core development thrust is not in 
>>> fixing bugs for existing features but in adding new features for the 
>>> sake of new features.
>>
>> not many are eager to spend their spare time after working hours on fixing 
>> complicated bugs and going through the whole process and discussions.
> 
> If the incentive for fixing bugs was enticing enough, wouldn't there be eager 
> developers? 

Do you have a recipe of how to give an enticing incentive? Actually, from 
looking at your issues you are suggesting solutions in some places, but you 
seem not be motivated enough to make a pull request for example. 
Why is that?

> What then is the point of adding new features onto an unhealthy, 
> under-supported language?

I think you exaggerate. But the point is attracting new people. If you do not 
move, people move away. Annoying, long standing bugs can have the same effect 
of course

>  If this is truly the state of the union, then I would vote NO on all new 
> feature development.

We need to find the right balance. The new parser for example does not exist 
because we wanted a new parser. It exists because the old parser started to 
become a problem for fixing bugs. Of course once you have a new parser, that is 
more maintainable and a person that understands it very well, you will also see 
features from other languages and see them with the eyes of a parser guy that 
is wondering if this brings any benefit to Groovy. That is natural.

Anyway... the static compiler is a deep resource of bugs and will stay being it 
a long time. Inner classes in all variants contain new surprises time over 
time. But excluding those two topics what are your top 3 of open bugs in jira 
entered by you where existing features do not mix well with eachother or are 
not completely implemented?

bye Jochen

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