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superceded by a lot of people more versed in Squeak than I am doing a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
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