On Thu, Jun 21, 2007 at 05:24:56PM +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> > He's not asking Roland to make changes because he's his manager and
> > can tell him what to work on. The correct way to interpret this is as
> > an exchange of review commentary between peer engineers. If Roland
> > doesn't want to make those changes, Meem can ask the C-team to block
> > his RTI due to unsatisfied review comments. That's not the same as
> > saying that Roland has to do this or that or he's fired.
>
> OK, if I get the right to block the RTI for the next unplanned (*) Sun tar,
> I have no problem with this point of view. If this is not possible, it would
> help a lot if there was a more realistic approach.
There are a few important points here:
- The C-team has the last word on integration. One may ask them
for cause to deny or hold integration, but one cannot force them
to do so.
- The context here is one in which a reviewer has made comments he
feels require action and no action was taken by the implementer, a
rare situation (and not one I expect to occur in the case of
ksh93). Not all review comments are "fix this or I'll block you";
it's normal to get some pushback on things that are seen as out of
scope or where the reviewer simply hasn't understood the intent.
- You're not allowed to obstruct others' work just because you
don't personally feel it's worth doing, or because you're feeling
vindictive and spiteful. Concerns raised should be of a technical
nature and should relate to the correctness of the particular
change.
You can ask the C-team to hold or deny integration of any changes to
tar because you personally feel that your program is the only one in
the universe worth using and think that working on anything else is a
waste of time. However, if you're not a reviewer, the reviewers are
happy, the work appears to be complete, and you bring petty, selfish
reasons, I hope and expect that the C-team would ignore you. With any
luck they'd also file away a mental note to ignore you in the future.
OpenSolaris engineering tends to route around damage. Make no mistake
about it, people who spend most of their time looking for ways to
obstruct others' work for personal reasons are damage. If you want to
influence the state of archiving software in OpenSolaris, you'll have
a lot more luck if you engage honestly and constructively. All your
message here has done is put me and everyone else on notice that if we
want to do anything to tar, we should avoid at all costs asking you to
review our changes or otherwise participate. That's unfortunate for
everyone, because you could probably help improve quality by finding
bugs others might miss. But it's not worth the hassle, so you'll
likely be bypassed. Surely that's not your intent?
--
Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!"
FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
