Re: shortened flags affair, part 8: choosing appropriate flag (issue4312057)

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 10:36:15AM +0200, Janek Warchoł wrote:
> 2011/4/4 Graham Percival <address@hidden>
> > Think about it this way: how many times have you reviewed my build
> > system patches, or Colin's documentation patches?  The same
> > reasons why you don't review those patches apply to people looking
> > at your patches.
> 
> Perhaps... However seasoned developers can understand my patches while
> i (mostly) cannot understand their patches, so i quite cannot review
> them.

You severely over-estimate either the number of "seasoned
developers", or the skill of most people on this mailing list.
There are between 3 and 7 people in the world who know this flag
stuff as well as you do.

The same goes for virtually every aspect of lilypond.  There are
very few actual "seasoned" developers, and most of those are very
busy with other things in their lives.  We all need to
collectively stop feeling inferior, and start giving each other
whatever support we can give.  If that means spending a few
minutes reading a patch and saying "wow, looks complicated" or
asking "silly" questions, then that's fine!  Any feedback on a
patch is better than none.

> May i ask for some help with this?

I can give general advice on programming, not anything specific to
this: find the smallest change which produces this problem.

If you try to compile that file with git master, it should work
with no problems.  Great!  Now try making *one* change to the C++
file.  Did that change break it?  If so, then you've found the
suspicious line.  If that change didn't break it, then undo that
change and make a different one.  Or, if the change actually does
any useful functionality, then get that really-small-but-working
change accepted and pushed, before working on the rest of the
changes.

Cheers,
- Graham