Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Yury V. Zaytsev]

On Sun, 11 Sep 2016, Andrey Gursky wrote:

Once I read the beginning of this last sentence I knew I've heard 
something very similar already before.


[...]


... and so, what is that more exactly that you are trying to tell me? I 
can't see how your email brings anything new to the table.


--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Andrey Gursky]

Hi Yury,

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016 21:00:31 +0200 (CEST)
"Yury V. Zaytsev"  wrote:

> On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, denisgolovan wrote:
> 

[cut]

> > I mean to structure those 500+ bugs/features ("future" milestone) in 
> > some meaningful way + put some estimates(weeks, dollars)/difficulty for 
> > them and try to pursue people on popular Linux forums for support.
> 
> If you are willing to invest some serious effort into pulling out 
> something like that, let me know if there is anything I could reasonably 
> help you with.
> 
> In my personal view of the situation, however, then the biggest problem 
> with mc codebase today is the abysmal state of test coverage, which makes 
> maintenance a gamble and demands extreme efforts to review patches.
> 
> Before this problem is addressed, I'm not very positive about soliciting 
> massive contributions, which will end up rotting on the Trac waiting for 
> code reviews and rewrites... that might never come.

Once I read the beginning of this last sentence I knew I've heard
something very similar already before. Indeed, it was on the last Chaos
Computer Club meeting [1]. In short: Some developer contributed a nice
feature, it was good but it wasn't good enough for the (now former)
maintainer of libusb. He wanted to get it more stable before he would
release it. The issue was, that the other developer didn't share his
opinion on the not so high quality of the implementation, since it did
just work. The result of this confrontation was pretty sad for that
maintainer.

In my opinion there are at least two kind of open source projects:
private and community ones. While the author is allowed to do what and
how he/she want in the first case, the second case is different. It is
a compromise of how it should be and how it can be really done. (I
personally also don't very like all these compromises, but it really
seems they are unavoidable). While a maintainer can ask to contribute
tests and say that has a 1st priority, this is OK, but to block the
ongoing work to force other to work on that solution (or to force other
to wait until a maintainer himself completes this) is a no go in my
opinion.

Regards,
Andrey


[1] libusb: Maintainer fail
How I failed to run an open source project
https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7547-libusb_maintainer_fail
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Yury V. Zaytsev]

On Fri, 19 Aug 2016, denisgolovan wrote:

It looks to me it will require becoming an MC developer first. To make a 
positive influence on this process, I mean. Estimating/tearing tickets 
apart/etc. requires quite a lot of project internal structure knowledge.


That's correct; it's a very time-intensive and demanding work...


In my personal view of the situation, however, then the biggest problem
with mc codebase today is the abysmal state of test coverage, which makes
maintenance a gamble and demands extreme efforts to review patches.

Before this problem is addressed, I'm not very positive about soliciting
massive contributions, which will end up rotting on the Trac waiting for
code reviews and rewrites... that might never come.


Hm. That doesn't seem too optimistic...


No, it doesn't sound optimistic at all, but I don't think that covering up 
problems is going to be of any help here. As they say, recognizing the 
issues is the first step toward getting them addressed.


Midnight Commander is a complex piece of software, maybe not so much due 
to the inherent complexity of the tasks which it is designed to deal with, 
but due to subtle variations of platforms, compilers, libraries, 
terminals, operating systems, etc.


Now, if this whole complexity is not covered with a reasonable amount of 
tests, at some point, there is no chance in hell you are not going to 
introduce obscure side-effects by most innocently looking changes.


This, in turn, entails that overly high cognitive load is required to make 
halfway meaningful patch reviews, which end up taking ages, and one still 
ends up overlooking stuff, and introducing new bugs by applying a bug fix.


To my mind, this is the biggest technical and organizational problem we 
are facing right now; I hope that I can do something about that when I 
have more time for mc.


--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[denisgolovan]

18.08.2016, 22:01, "Yury V. Zaytsev" :

> Besides, I don't even want to work on mc all day long :-) It's a great
> hobby project for a few days per week, but that's about it. So, my
> personal dream would be to find an employer who is ready to sponsor 1/2
> days per week of open source work (the more, the better ;-) ), such that I
> could put part of this time towards mc, but on a regular basis (i.e.
> weekly) rather than ad hoc, and still enjoy all the perks of not being
> "self-employed"; how this pans out we shall see in the near future.

Yeap. I understand you perfectly :)

>
> Now, yet again, this is just my personal view of things...
>
>>  I mean to structure those 500+ bugs/features ("future" milestone) in
>>  some meaningful way + put some estimates(weeks, dollars)/difficulty for
>>  them and try to pursue people on popular Linux forums for support.
>
> If you are willing to invest some serious effort into pulling out
> something like that, let me know if there is anything I could reasonably
> help you with.

Well.
It looks to me it will require becoming an MC developer first.
To make a positive influence on this process, I mean.
Estimating/tearing tickets apart/etc. requires quite a lot of project internal 
structure knowledge.

> In my personal view of the situation, however, then the biggest problem
> with mc codebase today is the abysmal state of test coverage, which makes
> maintenance a gamble and demands extreme efforts to review patches.
>
> Before this problem is addressed, I'm not very positive about soliciting
> massive contributions, which will end up rotting on the Trac waiting for
> code reviews and rewrites... that might never come.

Hm. That doesn't seem too optimistic...

> --
> Sincerely yours,
> Yury V. Zaytsev

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Denis Golovan
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Yury V. Zaytsev]

On Thu, 18 Aug 2016, denisgolovan wrote:


But why not try some form of crowd-funding / bounty-hunting?


I can only speak for myself and my experience is that with most successful 
crowd-funding projects, maintainers end up getting paid several times 
lower wages than the market rates, and this income is unstable (that is, 
no indications whatsoever as to what happens when the money from the 
campaign runs out). In exchange for that, however, they get to work on an 
exciting open source project of their own choosing and enjoy flexible 
working times.


I have a lot of respect for the engineers who do go for this (I know some, 
and they are really seriously brilliant), but, very unfortunately, this is 
not a compromise that I'm personally prepared to accept.


Besides, I don't even want to work on mc all day long :-) It's a great 
hobby project for a few days per week, but that's about it. So, my 
personal dream would be to find an employer who is ready to sponsor 1/2 
days per week of open source work (the more, the better ;-) ), such that I 
could put part of this time towards mc, but on a regular basis (i.e. 
weekly) rather than ad hoc, and still enjoy all the perks of not being 
"self-employed"; how this pans out we shall see in the near future.


Now, yet again, this is just my personal view of things...

I mean to structure those 500+ bugs/features ("future" milestone) in 
some meaningful way + put some estimates(weeks, dollars)/difficulty for 
them and try to pursue people on popular Linux forums for support.


If you are willing to invest some serious effort into pulling out 
something like that, let me know if there is anything I could reasonably 
help you with.


In my personal view of the situation, however, then the biggest problem 
with mc codebase today is the abysmal state of test coverage, which makes 
maintenance a gamble and demands extreme efforts to review patches.


Before this problem is addressed, I'm not very positive about soliciting 
massive contributions, which will end up rotting on the Trac waiting for 
code reviews and rewrites... that might never come.


--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[denisgolovan]

Hi guys

I am risking of being accused in hipster-thinking... :)
I know there were discussions of that some day. 
It looks there exist developers and quite a lot of users. Something else is 
missing.
But why not try some form of crowd-funding / bounty-hunting?

I mean to structure those 500+ bugs/features ("future" milestone) in some 
meaningful way + put some estimates(weeks, dollars)/difficulty for them and try 
to pursue people on popular Linux forums for support.

BR,
Denis

18.08.2016, 00:30, "Mooffie" :
>  On 8/17/16, Yury V. Zaytsev  wrote:
>>   I hope that my efforts in trying to find an employer
>>   who would be ready to sponsor some work on mc at least
>>   on the scale of several hours per week have now finally
>>   borne fruit
>
>  I very much hope so.
>
>  It amazes me that the Linux ecosystem (and similar OSs), under which
>  flourish gazillion of companies, don't help in this.
>
>  Perhaps people just aren't aware of the situation. Before I came here
>  I assumed there was some "Bilderberg group" behind MC. After all, MC
>  is such a basic element of Linux, so who wouldn't want a hand in it?
>
>>   basically, I've been inactive in the last couple
>>   of months (travelling, $dayjob), but [...]
>
>  Yep, I've noticed your resounding absence :-( I'm relieved to see
>  you're still an addict.
>
>  I too have been inactive. It started with a computer crash that kept
>  me busy for a couple of months, and afterwards I sort of remained
>  inactive. Not that I've been active before that.
>
>>   In the mean time, kudos to Andrew who is single-handedly
>>   doing some excellent work on mc right now...
>
>  Right! He's like Atlas. I mean it.
>
>  I swear, when that $75 million USD finally get to me from that
>  Nigerian prince whose rich uncle Absalom had died, the very first
>  thing I'm going to do is put Andrew and you on a hge payroll. For
>  Andrew I'll buy a gold Lamborghini. Even before I buy myself a
>  computer!
>  ___
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-- 
Regards,
Denis Golovan
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Mooffie]

On 8/17/16, Yury V. Zaytsev  wrote:
> I hope that my efforts in trying to find an employer
> who would be ready to sponsor some work on mc at least
> on the scale of several hours per week have now finally
> borne fruit

I very much hope so.

It amazes me that the Linux ecosystem (and similar OSs), under which
flourish gazillion of companies, don't help in this.

Perhaps people just aren't aware of the situation. Before I came here
I assumed there was some "Bilderberg group" behind MC. After all, MC
is such a basic element of Linux, so who wouldn't want a hand in it?

>
> basically, I've been inactive in the last couple
> of months (travelling, $dayjob), but [...]

Yep, I've noticed your resounding absence :-(  I'm relieved to see
you're still an addict.

I too have been inactive. It started with a computer crash that kept
me busy for a couple of months, and afterwards I sort of remained
inactive. Not that I've been active before that.

>
> In the mean time, kudos to Andrew who is single-handedly
> doing some excellent work on mc right now...

Right! He's like Atlas. I mean it.

I swear, when that $75 million USD finally get to me from that
Nigerian prince whose rich uncle Absalom had died, the very first
thing I'm going to do is put Andrew and you on a hge payroll. For
Andrew I'll buy a gold Lamborghini. Even before I buy myself a
computer!
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Re: mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Yury V. Zaytsev]

On Wed, 17 Aug 2016, Mooffie wrote:


* "Folder Jumping"

 A feature borrowed from GitHub.com.[1]


Sounds awesome!


* Unwind

 Automatically convert Windows/DOS line-ends to Unix, in
 the editor.


This is something that has often been requested before under many guises 
(mainly line endings autodetection), however, I'm not sure whether 
automatic dos2unix conversion is the best way to handle it.


I think it would be nice to have an IDEA-like behaviour where the line 
endings scheme is detected automatically and then the buffer is edited 
according to the detected scheme, however, one optionally can force 
automatic conversion to the desired scheme as well.


//

I'd like to use this opportunity to post an update re. what's going on at 
my end: basically, I've been inactive in the last couple of months 
(travelling, $dayjob), but I hope that my efforts in trying to find an 
employer who would be ready to sponsor some work on mc at least on the 
scale of several hours per week have now finally borne fruit and if all 
goes well I will again get more actively involved in mc this fall.


In the mean time, kudos to Andrew who is single-handedly doing some 
excellent work on mc right now...


--
Sincerely yours,
Yury V. Zaytsev
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mc^2 news (august 2016)

[Mooffie]

Hi folks!

mc^2 is a Lua energized version of MC:

http://www.typo.co.il/~mooffie/mc-lua/docs/html/

So, what's new since last month? -Two exciting modules:

* "Folder Jumping"

  A feature borrowed from GitHub.com.[1]

  See screenshot[2]

* Unwind

  Automatically convert Windows/DOS line-ends to Unix, in
  the editor.

  See screenshot[3]

(You don't need to configure anything if you want to try out these
modules: the 'demo' module will ask you, at startup, which features
you want to enable.)


[1] https://github.com/blog/1877-folder-jumping
[2] 
http://www.typo.co.il/~mooffie/mc-lua/docs/html/guide/SCREENSHOTS.md.html#folder-jumping
[3] 
http://www.typo.co.il/~mooffie/mc-lua/docs/html/guide/SCREENSHOTS.md.html#unwind
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