Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity,

On 18 January 2012 11:08, Andriy Gapon <avg@freebsd.org> wrote:
> on 18/01/2012 12:54 Igor Mozolevsky said the following:

[snip]

>>> There are about 5000 open PRs for FreeBSD base system, maybe more.
>>> There are only a few dozens of active FreeBSD developers. =C2=A0Maybe l=
ess for any
>>> given particular point in time (as opposed to a period of time).
>>> And dealing with PRs is not always exciting.
>>> Need I continue?
>>
>> Is that because there are so many bugs that need fixing or is it
>> because PRs get ignored/become staled?
>
> Sorry for saying the obvious, but it is because the PRs are fixed at slow=
er rate
> than they are opened.

That may be the case, but we are not talking about PRs as a whole, but
PRs that already contain fixes...

>> From the preceding discussion
>> it appears to be more of the latter than the former.
>
> Impressions can be deceiving.
> Honestly, do you believe that all committers are willfully ignoring the P=
Rs just
> to cause pain to the users? =C2=A0Or do you consider a possibility that t=
here is an
> objective reason why the things are the way they are?

I was not suggesting malice on behalf of the developers at all, what I
was saying is that there is an *appearance* that developers prefer to
write new and funky code in lieu of dealing with PRs. This is
evidenced by people saying that one has to persistently nag to get the
patch looked at/incorporated. Why should that be the case, when it
isn't the case on other F/OSS projects? This might be another "social"
problem is that the PR and the bug busting team do not have enough
stick over devs...

>> Throwing toys out of the pram
>> because there's just "too much" stuff to do is really not the answer
>> I'm afraid...
>
> So what's your suggestion? =C2=A0But, please, nothing involving other peo=
ple
> spontaneously starting to do what you believe to be the right thing.

For starters, what would be much more appreciated is for devs to be
much more involved from the start once someone does submit the patch.
I appreciate that people a fallible and from time to time are bound to
forget that they have a PR with a patch assigned to them, but there's
no reason why the PR handling system can't email reminders... The best
way of dealing with "too much" on my plate, from personal experience,
is to start tackling things one at a time... :-)

--
Igor M. :-)
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