Re: [Gdbheads] Re: Feb's patch resolution rate

[David Carlton]

On Fri, 26 Mar 2004 10:50:41 -0500, Andrew Cagney <address@hidden> said:

> Jim, lets stick to this question.  Would the pair:

>       Elena
>       David

> make for a better symbol table leads than:

>       JimB
>       Elena

That scenario isn't a possible one right now: I have zero willingness
to increase my GDB maintainerships under the current situation.  I
don't want to be a part of a situation where my workload is
artificially inflated because other qualified people aren't allowed to
help.  I don't want to be in Elena's or Jim's role a couple of years
from now, where I'm not working on the symbol table day to day, where
I don't have time to reliably respond quickly to the patches of other
people who are working on it from day to day, and where other people
who could help aren't able to do so.  And I don't want to be part of
any personal battles between other GDB developers, either.

If global maintainers are allowed to approve arbitrary patches, it
would be a different story - I would be happy to be a symtab
maintainer in that situation, knowing that Elena, Jim, and Daniel were
all there to help, along with whatever other global maintainers might
have cause to seriously delve into the symbol table in the future.

> The symbol table is a critical piece of infrastructure and as such
> needs a steady hand, and a long term commitment by developers.  Both
> through overhaul, and through a disciplined and diligent review of
> patches. What the area does not need is random tugs in differing
> directions based on the wim of "maintainer of the day".

If global maintainers aren't disciplined and diligent, and will tug at
GDB in random directions, we have other problems.

>> So I didn't see how it was in GDB's interests to remove myself from
>> the list of people able to approve symtab patches.

> GDB needs people that _do_ review symtab patches, not people that are
> listed as being "able to approve" symtab patches.  There is a very
> real difference.

Yes, there is a difference.  Fortunately, Jim does review patches -
you counted him as reviewing 25 symtab patches in 2003, and he's
continued reviewing patches in 2004.  Elena reviewed 133 patches in
2003, a much larger number; but I don't see why it makes sense to
discard 25 approval's worth of work.  Even though he's reviewed
essentially none of my patches, I've still gotten a benefit from it -
for one thing, removing him would have made Elena even more
overloaded, and for another thing he's reviewed at least one patch of
Daniel's that significantly helped my work (the one involving the
demangled names hash table).

David Carlton
address@hidden