Huidae Cho wrote: > I can feel strong frictions between Glynn and some of us. I was shocked > when Glynn simply broke 7.1 on Windows. From my experience, I can see that > he is more of a purist and doesn't like workarounds and hacks. I totally > understand his points, but just because there is an issue doesn't make it > any more acceptable to break other people's solutions that have been proved > to work for a long time, *without* providing his own better solution. I > don't mind any existing code being replaced by more correct solutions, but > simply reverting it and breaking the whole system is not acceptable at all. > I think that the whole system *should* always be in a working condition no > matter what "magic" was used in the code. If that magic is hackery, dirty > or whatever, it has to be *fixed*, not just removed. If he submitted a part > of his solution in the middle, it's not acceptable again because he should > have submitted a whole solution to make sure the system is at least not > worse than before.
Sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes the job cannot be done by any one person. So if no-one is allowed to start anything they can't finish single-handedly, such issues will never be solved. > Now, regarding my "exclusive" hack or implementations without any > discussion, first, I apologize for not discussing this issue before > submitting my implementations. Putting aside who's right and who's wrong, > it's very frustrating and demotivating to see hours of effort is gone in > seconds of typing with no better solutions coming in. I outlined a possible solution as soon as I read your message. What are your objections to it? [I'm being facetious. Partly. I'm aware that the change had already been done before my message was posted. But the point about appearing to start a discussion then not waiting for a reply (or even following up in the thread to state that somehting had been done) is serious.] > As Martin said, I saw > a lot of core implementations from Glynn without clear discussions and he > often insists that he's right and he even said that he would revert any > changes he doesn't like. Looks like, any core changes have to be approved > by Glynn after serious discussions with him? He may be one of the best > developers in the team, but does it give him "exclusive" rights to revert > or break things with no solutions? I don't know. It's hard to address your comments without seeing any specifics. But AFAICT, there are two issues here. 1. I've made major structural changes (e.g. display re-write) which weren't discussed in detail (because that would have taken decades and I'm not assuming that I'll live to 100). But the broad outline was discussed long before any changes started. 2. When I've said "if you do X, I'll revert it", it's for a reason, and I'm always willing to discuss the issue. Usually, such a position is a desperate response to someone a) stating (or, more likely, implying) that they're going to make an ill-advised change and b) trying to avoid discussing the merits of it (in fact, the change or threat of change is often seems like an attempt to forestall discussion). It may come across as being dictatorial, but that's more psychology than fact. Trying to evade discussion by imposing something as a /fait accompli/ is actually rather more dictatorial. By coming straight out and saying "I'll revert that", I'm just telling them not to expect the "screw discussion, make facts on the ground" approach to work. Even if it means looking like the bad guy. Note: I don't consider the change being discussed here to be an instance of that. I think that it was just an unfortunate coincidence of Huidae being impatient and me not having the time to read my list mail that day. This has been up for discussion for years, and a few more days wouldn't have hurt. > Maybe, I was just simply wrong because I didn't have any discussion before > submitting the "exclusive" implementations and don't have rights to > complain about the revert. Now, I'm not sure what to discuss and what not > to. I even posted a couple of messages calling for a discussion, but they > got no attention at all. This kind of experience just demotivates and > pushes me away from real implementations and keeps me fixing small bugs and > typos here and there. > > Last, I have a strong feeling that we really need defined procedures that > we can follow when making changes to the core and even individual modules. > Otherwise, this same situation will arise again and again. We don't need defined procedures (if we do need them, we're screwed, because they aren't likely to happen). But if there's a realistic prospect that other people might have different ideas, at least try to get it discussed first (and don't assume that people are scanning the list 24/7; we live in different time zones, and some of us might occassionally miss a whole day). That might sound hypocritical in light of ... recent events regarding the scripts-on-Windows issue. But that issue had actually been discussed ad nauseum, and with precious little to show for it. Automatically setting shell=True on Windows was my mistake (I wasn't aware that it would affect argument parsing), and I fixed it. Unfortunately, as is often the case with such partial "solutions", the result is that we believed we were further ahead than we really were. Execution of scripts never actually worked on Windows, it just happened to be close enough to fool the casual observer, myself included. Which is a large part of the reason I'm so cautious (paranoid, some might say) about such issues. -- Glynn Clements <gl...@gclements.plus.com> _______________________________________________ grass-dev mailing list grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/grass-dev
