On Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:06:30 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote:
Michel Fortin wrote:
On 2009-10-10 19:01:35 -0400, dsimcha <dsim...@yahoo.com> said:
Overall, the point is that there should be a well-defined process for
getting
code into Phobos and a well-defined place to post this code and
comment on it.
Bugzilla probably doesn't cut it because it's not easy to download,
compile
and test lots of different snippets of code from here.
There should indeed be a process for proposing new modules or major
features. I don't care much what it is, but it should make code
available for review from all the interested parties, and allow public
discussion about this code. Whether this discussion should happen on
this newsgroup or elsewhere, I'm not sure however.
And it'd be nice if it could auto-generate documentation from the
proposed modules: glancing at the documentation often gives you a
different perspective on the API, and it'd encourage people to write
good documentation.
I'm all for accepting additions to Phobos, and for putting in place a
process to do so. I suggest we follow a procedure used to great effect
by Boost. They have a formal process in place that consists of a
preliminary submission, a refinement period, a submission, a review, and
a vote.
http://www.boost.org/development/submissions.html
I compel you all to seriously consider it, and am willing to provide
website space and access.
Andrei
It's great for Boost, because Boost has an extremely large user base.
Besides, Boost is large enough already and there are a lot of people who
is willing to contribute, so a very strict policy is needed.
Phobos is not like Boost. I believe a more open policy is required to make
people contribute to it.
For example, Tango is open to everyone, that's why it evolves so fast.
Although small, contributions are made in a daily basis by a lot of
people. They are not contributing entire libraries, of course, some small
bug-fixes, performance improvements, typos, name change (for consistency),
etc. Step-by-step it is getting better and better.
On the contrary, Phobos has stalled.
I submitted a few Phobos bugs to bugzilla. They are still not addressed.
Having 2-3 people with write access to Phobos is clearly not enough -
there is not enough human power. That's bugzilla entries are left without
answers, bugs are not fixed.
I don't submit them anymore. It just doesn't work. I see a lot of quirks
in Phobos, huge performance problems (it allocates every time, often
without any reason) and just typos.
Given a direct svn access, I could easily fix some of them, but I'm too
lazy to waste my time on creating one line long patches, making bugzilla
reports, etc. And what then? Waiting like 3 years until they are
addressed? No, thanks.
