On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 8:49 AM, Jim Jagielski <j...@jagunet.com> wrote:
> Just some food for thought; let me know if I'm off the rails. > > Over the last several months, it's appeared to me that we have > been adding patches that feel, well, very-patchy to me. They > feel like cumbersome add-ons that create some level of fragility > to our code, with special one-off considerations instead of a > deeper more complete fix. In other words, it seems that httpd is > becoming more crufty rather than planned and cohesive and > consistent. > > Thoughts? Comments? > I agree. I recently contributed to the improvement of the Apache HTTP server source code when I noticed that mod_dumpio.c was badly broken (it does not correctly handle null bytes). Which caused me to subscribe to the dev mailing list and read some earlier messages. I have been underwhelmed with the quality of the arguments for a given change or the code itself. Frankly, I would not allow almost all of the proposed changes I've seen (including my first patch to mod_dumpio.c) to be accepted. People reviewing changes to the existing code base have to be hard-nosed assholes. You have to reject changes that are problematic unless there is a) a "TODO" comment explaining the unresolved issues and b) a reason to believe the contributor or someone might resolve those issues in the near future. Similarly style issues are not just nitpicking. They are show stoppers for accepting a change. Every time I look at code that has a style different from the surrounding code it makes it more likely I'll overlook a bug or misinterpret what the code does. -- Kurtis Rader Caretaker of the exceptional canines Junior and Hank
