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Date:      Fri, 6 Feb 1998 05:59:44 +0100
From:      Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        chat@FreeBSD.ORG, "Daniel O'Connor" <doconnor@gsoft.com.au>
Subject:   Re: cvs commit: src/sys/conf files
Message-ID:  <19980206055944.59391@follo.net>
In-Reply-To: <793.886738588@gringo.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Thu, Feb 05, 1998 at 08:16:28PM -0800
References:  <19980206044551.64694@follo.net> <793.886738588@gringo.cdrom.com>

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On Thu, Feb 05, 1998 at 08:16:28PM -0800, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> > No, he couldn't.  Not as easy, anyway.  In mailing -current, not
> > handling a patch drops down to being Somebody Elses Problem - nobody
> > is responsible.  For personal mail, things end up as the
> 
> Which is why send-pr(1) exists.

Which again only let things set around and bitrot.  Not always, but at
least for major patches, fairly often.  It is hard to allocate time to
review/test a major patch, especially when 'hey, anybody else can do
it'.

send-pr isn't a replacement for somebody's personal attention - it is
just a way to keep reminders around ;-) And don't get me wrong - I'm
not saying that we shouldn't have GNATS or something similar around.

I'm just pointing out solutions that I believe scale better, because
it seems to me that we're reaching some of the limits for the present
organization.  Integration by 'whoever picks it up' is one of the
places where I think we could benefit by changes.  I believe one of
the reasons for Linux' success is that external authors get their
changes integrated/reject more quickly.

We have ports that sit in Gnats for months before being committed.
And I'm as guilty as anybody here - I haven't committed them, either.
However, if I had gotten 1/10 or 1/20 of those ports as mail to me,
with the knowledge that I was expected to take first-line action on
them - I'd easily have been able to handle the extra workload. I would
have felt a much more specific pressure to take care of the stuff, too.

So, I'm throwing the ideas around, in an attempt at at least making
people aware of the alternatives.  And if somebody suddenly says
'Yeah, that sounds great!' on something, I just might prioritize to
get the time to actually implement the necessary infrastructure.  It
usually isn't more than a couple of evenings worth of work.

Eivind.



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