Re: [Gdbheads] Let's resolve this quickly

[Benjamin Kosnik]

>The usual pattern is "this patch broke X; fix it or I'll revert it"
>followed by either "no, no, I'll fix it!" or "you're right, that patch
>was broken, please do revert it."

This is my experience as well, as somebody who has been on both sides of
this issue.

:-)

Usually, the threat of reversion is all that is necessary to signify the
seriousness of the issue to both parties. (I've not had any experience
where this wasn't the case.)

> If gcc made it a critical goal that gcc always bootstrap on major
> architectures after every patch, then gcc development would measurably
> slow down.  It's OK that gcc is broken temporarily, as long as it gets
> fixed.

Yep. I think asking for patches to perfect, on all the hosts targets for
gcc or gdb, is really quite the impossible task. First of all, most GCC
developers don't have access to all the primary GCC build hosts to do
testing themselves. Certainly, clean builds on all primary hosts is
something to strive for, and it's always nice when this happens, but I
think planning for mistakes and allowing people the chance to make
things right is very necessary.

Also, auto-testing of the build, which does a good job of pointing
fingers without personalizing the issue. Perhaps if gdb goes down the
route of opening up the patch process, it should put in place
auto-testers to verify the integrity of the gdb build on important
hosts.

-benjamin