Of source code lost in eternity

Andrew P. Black apb at cse.ogi.edu
Mon Jan 10 19:42:14 UTC 2000


Folks:

As a newcomer to this community, I've learned a lot through this discussion.

First, I'm glad to learn that I'm not the only one overwhelmed by the 
volume of good stuff on this list, and wishing for a more structured 
way to browse it.

Second, I discovered http://swiki.gsug.org:8080/SQFIXES/ , of which I 
had no knowledge before now!  And I even found one of my own, small 
Fixes on that server.  This is really great.  I assume that it works 
because I included [FIX] in the subject line of my original 
submission.

SQFIXES seems to work fairly well without any moderation.  But it 
does have some shortcomings.  For example, if I find a bug in my fix, 
or even a typo in the email message that announced it, there appears 
to be no way to fix it.

Where would moderation be useful?  Some of you will probably remember 
an email storm a few weeks go which I started by announcing a fix for 
a bug in Interval>>includes:  Fortunately, I didn't say [FIX] in that 
email--I say fortunately because my fix was (a) buggy and (b) 
superceded by a lot of people more versed in Squeak than I am doing a 
more complete and more elegant job.  How does the "final" fix in such 
a chain get into http://swiki.gsug.org:8080/SQFIXES/ ? Sounds like 
the role of a moderator to me.  Also, my enhancement to the browser 
that provides control over the automatic generation of getters and 
setters did not get into SQFIXES, even though it is a more 
significant piece or work, and thanks to the other people on this 
list, quite polished.

The other thing that would be useful is some documentation that tells 
us about the existence of wonderful facilities like the archive of 
the mailing list (whee is it, anyway?), and  SQFIXES, and says how 
one gets something into SQFIXES.  (If its [FIX] or [ENH] or both that 
does the magic?  And what is the difference between [GOODIE] and 
[ENH] anyway?  Perhaps the introduction message that new subscribers 
get when they join the list could say these things?  And perhaps it 
could be resent once a month or once a quarter to the whole list?


         Andrew





More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list