Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-04-10 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Marcus Meissner  wrote:

> Also Alexandre to some parts comments on bad patches these days. :)

If by 'bad patches' you mean patches in the rejected state that's not
the subject of this thread.

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-04-10 Thread Marcus Meissner
On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 04:52:42PM +0900, Dmitry Timoshkov wrote:
> Jeff Latimer  wrote:
> 
> > I agree a lot of developers would benefit from feedback, however that
> > does not appear to be the Wine way of doing business.  Maybe a halfway
> > measure would be to automatically notify the developer that their patch
> > has been marked as pending and then the developer can ask.
> 
> Something like "Your patch is pending, you have to ask to get an answer why."?
> But the answer known, and it is
> * The patch is not obviously correct at first glance. Making a more
> convincing argument, preferably in the form of a test case, may help.
> * Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area.
> 
> And how is that better than current situation when in order to get
> a feedback a developer have to ask?
> 
> Q: What's wrong with my patch xxx?
> A: The patch is not obviously correct at first glance...
> Q: What can I do?
> A: Making a more convincing argument, preferably in the form of a test case,
> may help.
> 
> ... or may not help.
> 
> http://wiki.winehq.org/SubmittingPatches suggests
> "If your patch disappears from http://source.winehq.org/patches/ without
> being committed, improve it (perhaps by adding more tests) and resend."
> 
> The patch disappears from the patch tracker in a month. You have plenty time
> for 11 resends in an year, don't you?

Also Alexandre to some parts comments on bad patches these days. :)

Ciao, Marcus




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-04-10 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Jeff Latimer  wrote:

> I agree a lot of developers would benefit from feedback, however that
> does not appear to be the Wine way of doing business.  Maybe a halfway
> measure would be to automatically notify the developer that their patch
> has been marked as pending and then the developer can ask.

Something like "Your patch is pending, you have to ask to get an answer why."?
But the answer known, and it is
* The patch is not obviously correct at first glance. Making a more
convincing argument, preferably in the form of a test case, may help.
* Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area.

And how is that better than current situation when in order to get
a feedback a developer have to ask?

Q: What's wrong with my patch xxx?
A: The patch is not obviously correct at first glance...
Q: What can I do?
A: Making a more convincing argument, preferably in the form of a test case,
may help.

... or may not help.

http://wiki.winehq.org/SubmittingPatches suggests
"If your patch disappears from http://source.winehq.org/patches/ without
being committed, improve it (perhaps by adding more tests) and resend."

The patch disappears from the patch tracker in a month. You have plenty time
for 11 resends in an year, don't you?

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-04-09 Thread Jeff Latimer
On 09/04/12 16:50, Dmitry Timoshkov wrote:
> It should be in the best ineterests of the project to provide as much
> feedback as possible, and should improve not only amount of accepted
> code (by encouraging developers provide more
> comments/explanations/tests/etc. and more actively discuss possible
> ways to fix a particular bug), but also code quality and help
> developers better understand what could be improved in future
> submissions. Silently marking a patch as 'pending' doesn't help with
> that at all. Consider that if two my patches for SetParent would be
> accepted one year ago but not one year later (without a single change
> but just afer asking once again what's wrong with them), that
> fundamental SetParent bug could be already fixed long time ago. 
I agree a lot of developers would benefit from feedback, however that
does not appear to be the Wine way of doing business.  Maybe a halfway
measure would be to automatically notify the developer that their patch
has been marked as pending and then the developer can ask.



Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-04-08 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Jerome Leclanche  wrote:

> I think the general feeling is that Pending should be renamed to "Decision
> pending" and that more feedback is needed at least in the form of "this is
> the wrong approach" or "this may be the right approach, explain yourself
> better". But the general feeling is that "Pending" currently means "Not
> good enough" and never gets looked at again. I agree it's very confusing.

It should be in the best ineterests of the project to provide as much feedback
as possible, and should improve not only amount of accepted code (by encouraging
developers provide more comments/explanations/tests/etc. and more actively
discuss possible ways to fix a particular bug), but also code quality and help
developers better understand what could be improved in future submissions.
Silently marking a patch as 'pending' doesn't help with that at all.

Consider that if two my patches for SetParent would be accepted one year ago
but not one year later (without a single change but just afer asking once
again what's wrong with them), that fundamental SetParent bug could be already
fixed long time ago.

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-30 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Alexandre Julliard  wrote:

> > WM_SHOWWINDOW at the start and at the end of every message sequence
> > means that ShowWindow() should be used to hide and show the window
> > during SetParent call processing.
> 
> That's the sort of explanation you should have included in your
> patch, instead of expecting me to dig through the source or the list
> archive to find it. Plus of course some explanation as to why the test
> can't be marked as succeeding despite the change.

Alexandre, do I need to provide more clarifications?

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Jerome Leclanche
On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Alexandre Julliard wrote:

> Michael Stefaniuc  writes:
>
> >> The pending state is feedback. It means that the patch is not clearly
> > yes, but the worst possible feedback.
> >
> > New people assume you or the area maintainer need to still make up their
> > mind on the patch but that's not the case, it is a done deal.
>
> Not necessarily. Patches are automatically marked pending as soon as I
> look at them, until they get a more permanent resolution. There can be
> many different reasons why they don't get one.
>
> > Iff one knows you and knows to read in between the lines then the above
> > can be reworded as:
> >   "Current implementation rejected; idea might have some merit."
> >
> > That's what "Pending" means most of the times.
>
> Sometimes, yes.
>
> > Now for the other meanings of "Pending":
> > - "Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area."
> >   Don't remember to have ever seen that. Those patches stay normally in
> > "New" as you don't look at them before the area developer ACKs.
>
> No, I usually do look at them. Sometimes I go back and mark them as New
> again, but not always.
>
> > - "preferably in the form of a test case"
> >   That should be "Needs tests".
>
> It would be, in cases where tests are clearly the right way. There are
> cases where it's not clear whether a test is feasible, and using "Needs
> tests" may lead the submitter down the wrong path.
>
> > - With the two (minor) other meanings of "Pending" handled by other
> > patch states we can rename "Pending" to "Convince me" or "Needs work".
> > That would make it more obvious what is meant.
>
> I can certainly rename "pending" to "convince me" if it helps, but I
> think it's important to have some sort of open-ended resolution to leave
> room for developer's judgement. There are many cases where I'm genuinely
> undecided about the right resolution, and I feel it's preferable to show
> the undecision and leave it to the developer to try to address one way
> or the other, even if that's of course harder than being told exactly
> what to do.
>
> --
> Alexandre Julliard
> julli...@winehq.org
>


I think the general feeling is that Pending should be renamed to "Decision
pending" and that more feedback is needed at least in the form of "this is
the wrong approach" or "this may be the right approach, explain yourself
better". But the general feeling is that "Pending" currently means "Not
good enough" and never gets looked at again. I agree it's very confusing.

 J. Leclanche



Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Alexandre Julliard
Michael Stefaniuc  writes:

>> The pending state is feedback. It means that the patch is not clearly
> yes, but the worst possible feedback.
>
> New people assume you or the area maintainer need to still make up their
> mind on the patch but that's not the case, it is a done deal.

Not necessarily. Patches are automatically marked pending as soon as I
look at them, until they get a more permanent resolution. There can be
many different reasons why they don't get one.

> Iff one knows you and knows to read in between the lines then the above
> can be reworded as:
>   "Current implementation rejected; idea might have some merit."
>
> That's what "Pending" means most of the times.

Sometimes, yes.

> Now for the other meanings of "Pending":
> - "Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area."
>   Don't remember to have ever seen that. Those patches stay normally in
> "New" as you don't look at them before the area developer ACKs.

No, I usually do look at them. Sometimes I go back and mark them as New
again, but not always.

> - "preferably in the form of a test case"
>   That should be "Needs tests".

It would be, in cases where tests are clearly the right way. There are
cases where it's not clear whether a test is feasible, and using "Needs
tests" may lead the submitter down the wrong path.

> - With the two (minor) other meanings of "Pending" handled by other
> patch states we can rename "Pending" to "Convince me" or "Needs work".
> That would make it more obvious what is meant.

I can certainly rename "pending" to "convince me" if it helps, but I
think it's important to have some sort of open-ended resolution to leave
room for developer's judgement. There are many cases where I'm genuinely
undecided about the right resolution, and I feel it's preferable to show
the undecision and leave it to the developer to try to address one way
or the other, even if that's of course harder than being told exactly
what to do.

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julli...@winehq.org




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Alexandre Julliard  wrote:

> > WM_SHOWWINDOW at the start and at the end of every message sequence
> > means that ShowWindow() should be used to hide and show the window
> > during SetParent call processing.
> 
> That's the sort of explanation you should have included in your
> patch, instead of expecting me to dig through the source or the list
> archive to find it. Plus of course some explanation as to why the test
> can't be marked as succeeding despite the change.

There are other things inside of SetParent that break message sequences,
that's why the patches were prepended with a comment explaining what's
wrong with Setparent and saying that it's the first step.

> > Taking an opportunity to discuss other my patches :) I'd like to get
> > a comment to 84685 as well.
> 
> Try making it simpler.

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Michael Stefaniuc
Alexandre,

On 03/28/2012 10:17 AM, Alexandre Julliard wrote:
> Dmitry Timoshkov  writes:
> 
>> It's very confusing, and absolutely not clear what is required from the
>> patch submitter, especially since *there is no any feedback on the patch*.
>> 'Rejected' at least requies some sort of feedback, while 'Pending' doesn't.
>> To me 'Pending' looks like a silent case of 'Reject', but without any
>> obligation to explain why.
>>
>> I find myself on somewhat shaky ground when I see a bunch of my patches
>> in the pending state, especially if they already contain the tests and
>> main developer in the area I'm changing is Alexandre :).
>>
>> Is it possible to get at least some feedback for pending patches? Pretty
>> please?
> 
> The pending state is feedback. It means that the patch is not clearly
yes, but the worst possible feedback.

New people assume you or the area maintainer need to still make up their
mind on the patch but that's not the case, it is a done deal.

> correct, but that it's complicated to articulate exactly why. Like it
> says, you should try to make it more convincing, either by simplifying
> the patch, or writing a test case.
Iff one knows you and knows to read in between the lines then the above
can be reworded as:
  "Current implementation rejected; idea might have some merit."

That's what "Pending" means most of the times.

Now for the other meanings of "Pending":
- "Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area."
  Don't remember to have ever seen that. Those patches stay normally in
"New" as you don't look at them before the area developer ACKs.

- "preferably in the form of a test case"
  That should be "Needs tests".

- With the two (minor) other meanings of "Pending" handled by other
patch states we can rename "Pending" to "Convince me" or "Needs work".
That would make it more obvious what is meant.

> For instance your patch 84692 says that "tests confirm that", but you
> don't say which tests, and there are no new tests or fixed todos in the
> patch, so it looks suspicious. Yes, I could dig out the tests myself and
> investigate it in detail, but when it gets to that point I usually just
> move on to the next patch, hence "pending".
IMHO that should have been "Needs tests"; that would have forced Dmitry
to point you to the tests.

bye
michael




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Alexandre Julliard
Dmitry Timoshkov  writes:

> I'm sorry, but that's not a feedback, and casual contributors may even
> not be aware of that patch tracking page. And as I mentioned if the patch
> already contains the tests it's not really obvious what should be added
> in addition. In the light of recent discussions about friendliness to
> users in bugzilla, I think that developers deserve at least small fraction
> of friendliness as well (Alexandre, you are nice and friendly all the time,
> but at least I sometimes feel like sending the patches to a blackwhole).

If you want to write a script that sends a nice friendly mail every time
a patch changes status I'd be happy to use it.

> There is not much tests for SetParent, and 84692 suggests to look at
> the tests added by
> http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2011-February/098711.html
>
> WM_SHOWWINDOW at the start and at the end of every message sequence
> means that ShowWindow() should be used to hide and show the window
> during SetParent call processing.

That's the sort of explanation you should have included in your
patch, instead of expecting me to dig through the source or the list
archive to find it. Plus of course some explanation as to why the test
can't be marked as succeeding despite the change.

> Taking an opportunity to discuss other my patches :) I'd like to get
> a comment to 84685 as well.

Try making it simpler.

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julli...@winehq.org




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Alexandre Julliard  wrote:

> The pending state is feedback. It means that the patch is not clearly
> correct, but that it's complicated to articulate exactly why. Like it
> says, you should try to make it more convincing, either by simplifying
> the patch, or writing a test case.

I'm sorry, but that's not a feedback, and casual contributors may even
not be aware of that patch tracking page. And as I mentioned if the patch
already contains the tests it's not really obvious what should be added
in addition. In the light of recent discussions about friendliness to
users in bugzilla, I think that developers deserve at least small fraction
of friendliness as well (Alexandre, you are nice and friendly all the time,
but at least I sometimes feel like sending the patches to a blackwhole).

> For instance your patch 84692 says that "tests confirm that", but you
> don't say which tests, and there are no new tests or fixed todos in the
> patch, so it looks suspicious. Yes, I could dig out the tests myself and
> investigate it in detail, but when it gets to that point I usually just
> move on to the next patch, hence "pending".

There is not much tests for SetParent, and 84692 suggests to look at
the tests added by
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2011-February/098711.html

WM_SHOWWINDOW at the start and at the end of every message sequence
means that ShowWindow() should be used to hide and show the window
during SetParent call processing.

But even the same patch sent another day after the tests
http://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-patches/2011-February/098748.html
didn't get any feedback and died in the pending state.

Taking an opportunity to discuss other my patches :) I'd like to get
a comment to 84685 as well.

Thanks.

-- 
Dmitry.




Re: 'Pending' patches state

2012-03-28 Thread Alexandre Julliard
Dmitry Timoshkov  writes:

> It's very confusing, and absolutely not clear what is required from the
> patch submitter, especially since *there is no any feedback on the patch*.
> 'Rejected' at least requies some sort of feedback, while 'Pending' doesn't.
> To me 'Pending' looks like a silent case of 'Reject', but without any
> obligation to explain why.
>
> I find myself on somewhat shaky ground when I see a bunch of my patches
> in the pending state, especially if they already contain the tests and
> main developer in the area I'm changing is Alexandre :).
>
> Is it possible to get at least some feedback for pending patches? Pretty
> please?

The pending state is feedback. It means that the patch is not clearly
correct, but that it's complicated to articulate exactly why. Like it
says, you should try to make it more convincing, either by simplifying
the patch, or writing a test case.

For instance your patch 84692 says that "tests confirm that", but you
don't say which tests, and there are no new tests or fixed todos in the
patch, so it looks suspicious. Yes, I could dig out the tests myself and
investigate it in detail, but when it gets to that point I usually just
move on to the next patch, hence "pending".

-- 
Alexandre Julliard
julli...@winehq.org




'Pending' patches state

2012-03-27 Thread Dmitry Timoshkov
Hello,

http://source.winehq.org/patches has the following legend for the Pending
patch status:

Pending 
* The patch is not obviously correct at first glance. Making a more
convincing argument, preferably in the form of a test case, may help.
* Waiting for feedback from the main developer in that area.

It's very confusing, and absolutely not clear what is required from the
patch submitter, especially since *there is no any feedback on the patch*.
'Rejected' at least requies some sort of feedback, while 'Pending' doesn't.
To me 'Pending' looks like a silent case of 'Reject', but without any
obligation to explain why.

I find myself on somewhat shaky ground when I see a bunch of my patches
in the pending state, especially if they already contain the tests and
main developer in the area I'm changing is Alexandre :).

Is it possible to get at least some feedback for pending patches? Pretty
please?

-- 
Dmitry.