Idea: "Timeout" submissions?

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at cs.otago.ac.nz
Thu Oct 2 23:05:30 UTC 2003


I wrote:
	"Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz> wrote:
	> The fact that old fixes "rot" is precisely why they should be given
	> the highest priority and cleaned up before new fixes are put in.
	> The absence of a fix can occasionally give a false impression about
	> what can be done to the rest of the system.  Just because a fix hasn't
	> been *harvested* doesn't mean it isn't being *used*.

Daniel Vainsencher <danielv at netvision.net.il> wrote:
	The only person capable of fixing this situation is the person
	using the fix, by posting that the fix is tested and works.

There are several false presuppositions here.  Perhaps the most important
is "all Squeak users, at any rate everyone using a FIX that has not yet
been harvested, is a member of the Squeak mailing list."  Another one is
"everyone has plenty of time to find out which FIXes have been harvested
and which haven't".

As someone who has contributed a small but non-zero number of FIXes and
ENHs, but is _frantically_ busy at the moment (12 hour work-day yesterday,
for example), I really *don't* have time to find out which of my things
have been adopted and which haven't.  (One of the things I've spent time
on in the last week is testing 3.6 on Solaris; that's probably more
important than any single FIX.)  But I will be greatly distressed if any
of my contributions are simply spat into the wastebin.  I expect other
people would feel the same way.

	As far as a harvester is concerned, there is no easy way to find
	"previous relevant fixes".

I have no idea what you mean here.  ALL fixes are relevant; they should
be considered from oldest to newest except for really REALLY urgent patches.

	In the absence of something to focus
	the attention on specific useful old fixes,

EVERY old FIX is a specific useful one until *proven* otherwise.

	I at least feel unconvinced that the old ones are more important
	than the new ones, and therefore uninclined to prioritize them.
	
Surely it's obvious?  The older a BUG or FIX is, the more likely it is
that other people have run into the same problem and also submitted a
FIX or at least a BUG report for it.  It's not that the older ones are
more _serious_, it's just that they've been around for longer.

Put it this way, in a business, any programmer who suggested ignoring
old bug reports (without evidence that they were not still relevant)
would be invited to consider a career in gardening, to put it politely.
	



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