Patch pinging

Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

Recently on #gcc, I have been conversing with several others on the
topic of patches lost in the tides of the gcc-patches mailing list.  I
flagged Jeff Downs' recent message as an example of a patch that has
been waiting since November
(http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-06/msg00177.html).  I then
volunteered to be a patch pinger, to watch the mailing list and ping
patches that don't get responses.  I currently do this for Win64 work
anyway, so I already read most of the mailing list as it is.

To do this between Kai and myself for Win64, he posts a commit message
at the end of the thread (Committed rev ###) to signify to me to
delete the thread from my inbox.  Every so often, I ask him about any
threads that haven't been addressed.  I offered to Ian to do the same
thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that
people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that
the thread is done with.  I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and
I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.

Re: Patch pinging

[Diego Novillo]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 14:09, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:

> threads that haven't been addressed.  I offered to Ian to do the same
> thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that
> people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that
> the thread is done with.  I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and
> I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.

Seems like a good idea to me.  I do not usually read the list every
day (or every week some times), so if a patch is in my area and I had
not been directly CC'd, it can take me up to 2 weeks to get to it.

Most of the areas I'm on had good coverage (particularly since I share
much with richi who is a very prolific patch reviewer), so it's not
too much of a problem.


Diego.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 14:09, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> threads that haven't been addressed.  I offered to Ian to do the same
>> thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that
>> people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that
>> the thread is done with.  I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and
>> I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.
>
> Seems like a good idea to me.  I do not usually read the list every
> day (or every week some times), so if a patch is in my area and I had
> not been directly CC'd, it can take me up to 2 weeks to get to it.
>
> Most of the areas I'm on had good coverage (particularly since I share
> much with richi who is a very prolific patch reviewer), so it's not
> too much of a problem.

Ok.  Is one person responding enough for me to start doing that?  I
don't know how this sort of approval / acceptance process works for
GCC.

Re: Patch pinging

[Martin Guy]

On 6/7/10, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> wrote:
>  > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 14:09, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >> threads that haven't been addressed.  I offered to Ian to do the same
>  >> thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that
>  >> people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that
>  >> the thread is done with.  I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and
>  >> I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.
>  >
>  > Seems like a good idea to me.  I do not usually read the list every
>  > day (or every week some times), so if a patch is in my area and I had
>  > not been directly CC'd, it can take me up to 2 weeks to get to it.
>  >
>  > Most of the areas I'm on had good coverage (particularly since I share
>  > much with richi who is a very prolific patch reviewer), so it's not
>  > too much of a problem.
>
>  Ok.  Is one person responding enough for me to start doing that?  I
>  don't know how this sort of approval / acceptance process works for
>  GCC.

Excellent idea and thanks for volunteering..

    M

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 3:17 PM, Diego Novillo <dnovillo@google.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 14:09, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> threads that haven't been addressed.  I offered to Ian to do the same
>>> thing for the whole mailing list if we can make it a policy that
>>> people who commit changes do what Kai is doing so that it's clear that
>>> the thread is done with.  I don't mind throwing a few pings down, and
>>> I already have the whole ML tagged with a gmail label.
>>
>> Seems like a good idea to me.  I do not usually read the list every
>> day (or every week some times), so if a patch is in my area and I had
>> not been directly CC'd, it can take me up to 2 weeks to get to it.
>>
>> Most of the areas I'm on had good coverage (particularly since I share
>> much with richi who is a very prolific patch reviewer), so it's not
>> too much of a problem.
>
> Ok.  Is one person responding enough for me to start doing that?  I
> don't know how this sort of approval / acceptance process works for
> GCC.

I would say that since you did not get any objections, you should try
it.  Of course, you may well get objections at that point, in which
case we should take the conversation back here.

Thanks for volunteering.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Eric Botcazou]

> Recently on #gcc, I have been conversing with several others on the
> topic of patches lost in the tides of the gcc-patches mailing list.  I
> flagged Jeff Downs' recent message as an example of a patch that has
> been waiting since November
> (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-06/msg00177.html).  I then
> volunteered to be a patch pinger, to watch the mailing list and ping
> patches that don't get responses.  I currently do this for Win64 work
> anyway, so I already read most of the mailing list as it is.

I'd avoid sending random "Ping.. was this committed" messages though, that's 
rather annoying.  The gcc-cvs archives are http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/

-- 
Eric Botcazou

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 1:01 PM, Eric Botcazou <ebotcazou@adacore.com> wrote:
>> Recently on #gcc, I have been conversing with several others on the
>> topic of patches lost in the tides of the gcc-patches mailing list.  I
>> flagged Jeff Downs' recent message as an example of a patch that has
>> been waiting since November
>> (http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2010-06/msg00177.html).  I then
>> volunteered to be a patch pinger, to watch the mailing list and ping
>> patches that don't get responses.  I currently do this for Win64 work
>> anyway, so I already read most of the mailing list as it is.
>
> I'd avoid sending random "Ping.. was this committed" messages though, that's
> rather annoying.  The gcc-cvs archives are http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-cvs/

Annoying or not, I wasn't offering to sift through svn commit logs.
It's very trivial for me to read through a mailing list that I already
read, and scan for messages that say "committed to branch B at
revision R."  It's a lot more complicated to find out if something has
been committed myself, for every single patch out there, when the
committer already knows and can send his followup message saying that
the patch went in.  Ideally, after a day of this, people will start
sending such messages to effectively close threads, and then you'll
see very few messages from me.

Re: Patch pinging

[Eric Botcazou]

> Annoying or not, I wasn't offering to sift through svn commit logs.
> It's very trivial for me to read through a mailing list that I already
> read, and scan for messages that say "committed to branch B at
> revision R."  It's a lot more complicated to find out if something has
> been committed myself, for every single patch out there, when the
> committer already knows and can send his followup message saying that
> the patch went in.

Then browse the ChangeLog files.

> Ideally, after a day of this, people will start sending such messages to
> effectively close threads, and then you'll see very few messages from me.

Please no, that's just a sheer waste of time/bandwidth/storage.

-- 
Eric Botcazou

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/07/2010 09:23 PM, NightStrike wrote:
> Annoying or not, I wasn't offering to sift through svn commit logs.
> It's very trivial for me to read through a mailing list that I already
> read, and scan for messages that say "committed to branch B at
> revision R."  It's a lot more complicated to find out if something has
> been committed myself, for every single patch out there, when the
> committer already knows and can send his followup message saying that
> the patch went in.  Ideally, after a day of this, people will start
> sending such messages to effectively close threads, and then you'll
> see very few messages from me.
>   
I'm seeing all those "did you commit it yet?" without even attempting to
check yourself if the patch has been actually committed (it's trivial).
IMO, it doesn't make sense. To be clear, you will *never* get replies
from me.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Steven Bosscher]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 9:23 PM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Ideally, after a day of this, people will start
> sending such messages to effectively close threads, and then you'll
> see very few messages from me.

That's a one way trip to my bozo bin...

Ciao!
Steven

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:

> On 06/07/2010 09:23 PM, NightStrike wrote:
>> Annoying or not, I wasn't offering to sift through svn commit logs.
>> It's very trivial for me to read through a mailing list that I already
>> read, and scan for messages that say "committed to branch B at
>> revision R."  It's a lot more complicated to find out if something has
>> been committed myself, for every single patch out there, when the
>> committer already knows and can send his followup message saying that
>> the patch went in.  Ideally, after a day of this, people will start
>> sending such messages to effectively close threads, and then you'll
>> see very few messages from me.
>>   
> I'm seeing all those "did you commit it yet?" without even attempting to
> check yourself if the patch has been actually committed (it's trivial).
> IMO, it doesn't make sense. To be clear, you will *never* get replies
> from me.

The gcc project currently has a problem: when people who are not
regular gcc developers send in a patch, those patches often get
dropped.  They get dropped because they do not get reviewed, and they
get dropped because after review they do not get committed.  This
discourages new developers and it means that the gcc project does not
move as fast as it could.

Nightstrike volunteered to implement one approach which could improve
matters: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-06/msg00154.html .  It
requires a change in process: after committing a patch, we send a
"committed" message on the thread on gcc-patches.  Some people already
do this.

Note that the plethora of patch pings will not continue if people
routinely send "committed" messages.

The question we face now is: are we willing to change our process in
order to improve it?  And, if we are willing, is this specific change
a reasonable one to make?

It is certainly true that this could be done in different ways.
However, nobody is volunteering to implement those other ways.
Somebody is volunteering to implement this way.  Are we willing to try
this, since we have a volunteer?  Or should we do nothing until and
unless somebody is willing to volunteer to implement something else?

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Joern Rennecke
<joern.rennecke@embecosm.com> wrote:
> Quoting NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com>:
>
>> Annoying or not, I wasn't offering to sift through svn commit logs.
>
> How about requiring that a patch should have an associated open PR with the
> patch keyword to be considered for pinging.
> Then you can do a bugzilla search for all open PRs with the patch keyword.
>

I suggested that a long time ago on irc, but was brutally shot down
for it.  Apparently, most people hate bugzilla :(  To be clear, what I
suggested was that every patch should have a PR.  There is way too
much duplication of purpose between bugzilla, gcc-bugs, and
gcc-patches.

TBH, I was sort of doing this manually to start for Jakub's patches
that had a PR with "Fixed" at the bottom of them.  I didn't ping on
any of those.  That was extra work, but it was doable.

Reading gcc-cvs, or ChangeLogs, or other things like that is just way
too much time.

Re: Patch pinging

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2010, NightStrike wrote:

> I suggested that a long time ago on irc, but was brutally shot down
> for it.  Apparently, most people hate bugzilla :(  To be clear, what I
> suggested was that every patch should have a PR.  There is way too
> much duplication of purpose between bugzilla, gcc-bugs, and
> gcc-patches.

For the record: I don't care for requiring Bugzilla for all submissions, 
but having it as an optional way of submitting patches, especially those 
for bugs that already have PRs, seems a good idea to me *if* it can be 
made to send the *full text* of any patch attachment and any replies to it 
in the body of a message to gcc-patches, not just gcc-bugs.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/07/2010 10:31 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> The question we face now is: are we willing to change our process in
> order to improve it?
Maybe. Currently, I have zero problems with it.
>   And, if we are willing, is this specific change
> a reasonable one to make?
>   
No.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Jeff Law]

On 06/07/10 14:31, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> The gcc project currently has a problem: when people who are not
> regular gcc developers send in a patch, those patches often get
> dropped.  They get dropped because they do not get reviewed, and they
> get dropped because after review they do not get committed.  This
> discourages new developers and it means that the gcc project does not
> move as fast as it could.
>
>    
So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular 
contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do 
this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their 
message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party 
tracking/pings.

Just thinking out loud,
Jeff

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/07/2010 11:05 PM, Jeff Law wrote:
> On 06/07/10 14:31, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> The gcc project currently has a problem: when people who are not
>> regular gcc developers send in a patch, those patches often get
>> dropped.  They get dropped because they do not get reviewed, and they
>> get dropped because after review they do not get committed.  This
>> discourages new developers and it means that the gcc project does not
>> move as fast as it could.    
> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular
> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do
> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their
> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party
> tracking/pings.
This makes sense. Thinking out loud myself, even for irregular
contributors, the idea of a ping-man doesn't really sound right, it's a
boring and error-prone task. Can anybody think of a way to automate the
job? For patches corresponding to Bugzilla entries we already have, more
or less, a complete procedure in place, I wonder if we could do
something for the other contributions...

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:

> On 06/07/2010 10:31 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> The question we face now is: are we willing to change our process in
>> order to improve it?
> Maybe. Currently, I have zero problems with it.

I understand that you have no problems with the current process.  As I
said in the e-mail to which you are replying, the problems arise for
people who are not familiar with the process.  It is difficult for
people who are not regular gcc contributors to contribute to gcc.  I
think it is important for the long-term health of the project for us
to continue looking for ways to lower the barriers for new
contributors.


>>   And, if we are willing, is this specific change
>> a reasonable one to make?
>>   
> No.

Can you expand?  What kinds of process changes would be reasonable to
make?

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/07/2010 11:16 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> Can you expand? What kinds of process changes would be reasonable to
> make?
>   
Following the terminology "irregular contributor", per Jeff message, I
would not consider unreasonable for irregular contributions to use more
extensively and consistently the patch-queue, which we have been using
for some time. In that way all the patches would be perfectly tracked,
as far as I can see. The last days I have been traveling, thus sorry if
I missed parts of the discussion, but I don't understand why the
patch-queue mechanism is not being seriously considered...

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:

> This makes sense. Thinking out loud myself, even for irregular
> contributors, the idea of a ping-man doesn't really sound right, it's a
> boring and error-prone task. Can anybody think of a way to automate the
> job? For patches corresponding to Bugzilla entries we already have, more
> or less, a complete procedure in place, I wonder if we could do
> something for the other contributions...

I am 100% in favor of automating the job, but there is little point in
discussing how we can automate the job unless somebody is prepared to
volunteer to actually do the work.  We do have a volunteer willing to
be a ping-man.

Would anybody care to volunteer to implement something?

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Andrew Pinski]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 2:21 PM, Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> wrote:
> On 06/07/2010 11:16 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> Can you expand? What kinds of process changes would be reasonable to
>> make?
>>
> Following the terminology "irregular contributor", per Jeff message, I
> would not consider unreasonable for irregular contributions to use more
> extensively and consistently the patch-queue, which we have been using
> for some time. In that way all the patches would be perfectly tracked,
> as far as I can see. The last days I have been traveling, thus sorry if
> I missed parts of the discussion, but I don't understand why the
> patch-queue mechanism is not being seriously considered...

Here are my two cents on this issue.
I think we have several issues we are trying to solve.
1) Some patches which have been approved are not applied.
As far as I can see this issue is what is trying to solve with the
"committed at revision XYZ" emails

2) Some patches are not been reviewed and being skipped/dropped on the floor.


Both of these issues are big issues with encouraging people to stay in
the community.

Now I don't have the numbers to submit my next statement but I think
the second issue is a bigger issue than the first issue.

Solving the first issue is up to the reviewer side rather than doing
any technical.  We should encourage the reviewers when they don't
recognize the developer who submitted the patch ask when reviewing the
patch if they have write after approval.

Now the second issue is a much bigger issue and I don't know how to
solve it because even if we have some semi automatic way of getting a
patch in a queue; some patches can still be dropped on the floor.
Having a queue of emails threads that need to be looked through is a
good start but then again we will have the same issue as we have with
bug reports of getting reviewers to review the "unconfirmed" email
threads.  I think we can improve on having a queue but this does not
solve the non technical issue of getting reviewers to review patches.

I think a big way of solving this is through a non technical solution
of having a person who just go through patches and mentors the "non
regular" developers.  Maybe reviewers will do the same later on.  I
know that Ian has done this before so have many other folks and the
ones who had been mentored are still coming back and have become
regular developers and in other cases reviewers.  Though there are
some which thought that the mentoring was an attack against them
rather than trying to help them.

Also change just for the name of change is a bad thing and will just
confuse people even more as evidence of this thread now.

Thanks,
Andrew Pinski

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:

> On 06/07/2010 11:16 PM, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> Can you expand? What kinds of process changes would be reasonable to
>> make?
>>   
> Following the terminology "irregular contributor", per Jeff message, I
> would not consider unreasonable for irregular contributions to use more
> extensively and consistently the patch-queue, which we have been using
> for some time. In that way all the patches would be perfectly tracked,
> as far as I can see. The last days I have been traveling, thus sorry if
> I missed parts of the discussion, but I don't understand why the
> patch-queue mechanism is not being seriously considered...

The patch tracker (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Patch_Tracking) is not
currently operating.

Would anybody like to volunteer to get it working again?

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/07/2010 11:40 PM, Andrew Pinski wrote:
> I think a big way of solving this is through a non technical solution
> of having a person who just go through patches and mentors the "non
> regular" developers.
>   
The only point I want to stress again, or maybe clarify, is that if a
*person* is going to do that, I expect the "entity" to behave like a
person, thus intelligently, thus not sending out standardized requests
about patches which obviously have been committed already, as any
*human* can quickly understand looking at gcc-cvs, svn, whatever. If you
tell me that it would be a rather stressful job, I agree, and that's why
I think we should find a way to automate it, assuming it's a real issue
to somebody.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 8 June 2010 00:21, Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> wrote:
> On 06/07/2010 11:40 PM, Andrew Pinski wrote:
>> I think a big way of solving this is through a non technical solution
>> of having a person who just go through patches and mentors the "non
>> regular" developers.
>>
> The only point I want to stress again, or maybe clarify, is that if a
> *person* is going to do that, I expect the "entity" to behave like a
> person, thus intelligently, thus not sending out standardized requests
> about patches which obviously have been committed already, as any
> *human* can quickly understand looking at gcc-cvs, svn, whatever. If you
> tell me that it would be a rather stressful job, I agree, and that's why
> I think we should find a way to automate it, assuming it's a real issue
> to somebody.

http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00667.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00670.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00681.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00637.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2010-04/msg00666.html

All those from a single recent thread in the gcc@ list. Not a place
where I would expect to find people that have given up on contributing
to GCC. I think you could obtain a more representative sample if you
asked in llvmdev or cfe-dev.

That said, I don't think pinging patches (or even faster reviews)
would solve the lack of GCC contributors. Potential contributors
actually give up much earlier.

Perhaps not an issue for anyone that is already a GCC developer, and
even less of an issue if they are paid to do so (at least until their
boss or their clients put them to work on some other free compiler or
libc++ library). But perhaps the lack of contributors is an issue for
the GCC project as a whole.

Cheers,

Manuel

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 7 June 2010 23:23, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
> Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:
>
>> This makes sense. Thinking out loud myself, even for irregular
>> contributors, the idea of a ping-man doesn't really sound right, it's a
>> boring and error-prone task. Can anybody think of a way to automate the
>> job? For patches corresponding to Bugzilla entries we already have, more
>> or less, a complete procedure in place, I wonder if we could do
>> something for the other contributions...
>
> I am 100% in favor of automating the job, but there is little point in
> discussing how we can automate the job unless somebody is prepared to
> volunteer to actually do the work.  We do have a volunteer willing to
> be a ping-man.

Perhaps NightStrike can fine-tune his approach. For example, only ping
on behalf of people that are not regular GCC developers (I think it is
pretty obvious after a while who those are).

Still, a patch tracker that:

* Allowed to submit patches via web and checked them for basic stuff
(changelog, formatting, perhaps even building and testing) and
automatically send them to gcc-patches for review with an appropriate
subject line.

* Tracked reviews in gcc-patches and updated the status in the tracker.

* Tracked commits and updated the status accordingly.

would be a superb contribution!

Patchwork is the closest I have found: http://ozlabs.org/~jk/projects/patchwork/
but it lacks categories/components. Others listed in
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Patch_Tracking are either too complex or
too simple.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/08/2010 02:20 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> Perhaps NightStrike can fine-tune his approach.
By the way, I wonder how many contributors can even think taking
seriously a message coming from "NightStrike". Not me, for sure...

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ben White]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

>Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> writes:
>
>  
>
>>This makes sense. Thinking out loud myself, even for irregular
>>contributors, the idea of a ping-man doesn't really sound right, it's a
>>boring and error-prone task. Can anybody think of a way to automate the
>>job? For patches corresponding to Bugzilla entries we already have, more
>>or less, a complete procedure in place, I wonder if we could do
>>something for the other contributions...
>>    
>>
>
>I am 100% in favor of automating the job, but there is little point in
>discussing how we can automate the job unless somebody is prepared to
>volunteer to actually do the work.  We do have a volunteer willing to
>be a ping-man.
>
>Would anybody care to volunteer to implement something?
>
>Ian
>
>  
>
Would a modestly modified copy of Bugzilla be workable for that something? 
I.E. Patchzilla?

AllParadox
Ben White

Re: Patch pinging

[Basile Starynkevitch]

On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:05 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
> On 06/07/10 14:31, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
> > The gcc project currently has a problem: when people who are not
> > regular gcc developers send in a patch, those patches often get
> > dropped.  They get dropped because they do not get reviewed, and they
> > get dropped because after review they do not get committed.  This
> > discourages new developers and it means that the gcc project does not
> > move as fast as it could.
> >
> >    
> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular 
> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do 
> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their 
> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party 
> tracking/pings.


I am not sure what does that mean in practice. I am only a write after
approval contributor, so I cannot formally approve any patch (except
perhaps to my MELT branch). However, I definitely can follow some
patches (and I even do have an intern, Jeremie Salvucci, who did all the
legal framework and wants to become a GCC contributor).

It seems that perhaps you are suggesting a status in between reviewers &
W.A.A. contributors.

Cheers
-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***

Re: Patch pinging

[Chiheng Xu]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Ben White <ja_walker@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Would a modestly modified copy of Bugzilla be workable for that something?
> I.E. Patchzilla?

Think about mercurial or git.  Every one can commit on his/her own
local repository, and "publish" his/her repository.  Every one can
pull other people's changes into his/her own repository, and can
selectively merge interesting/valuable changes. Every patch have it's
own branch. So called "approved patches" will be those patches whose
branches have been merged. Then, you only need to think whether or not
merge the branches the patches reside.

If you use mercurial or git, every change will not be lost, every one
can review and selectively merge any branch on his/her convenience.




-- 
Chiheng Xu
Wuhan,China

Re: Patch pinging

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 8 June 2010 05:42, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:05 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
>> On 06/07/10 14:31, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>> > The gcc project currently has a problem: when people who are not
>> > regular gcc developers send in a patch, those patches often get
>> > dropped.  They get dropped because they do not get reviewed, and they
>> > get dropped because after review they do not get committed.  This
>> > discourages new developers and it means that the gcc project does not
>> > move as fast as it could.
>> >
>> >
>> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular
>> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do
>> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their
>> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party
>> tracking/pings.
>
>
> I am not sure what does that mean in practice. I am only a write after
> approval contributor, so I cannot formally approve any patch (except
> perhaps to my MELT branch). However, I definitely can follow some
> patches (and I even do have an intern, Jeremie Salvucci, who did all the
> legal framework and wants to become a GCC contributor).
>
> It seems that perhaps you are suggesting a status in between reviewers &
> W.A.A. contributors.

No, I think you misunderstood.  The keyword would only indicate that
the patch author does not need anyone to commit it for them.  That
doesn't change the approval process.  It would tell NightStrike there
is no need to track the patch.

Re: Patch pinging

[Eric Botcazou]

> Reading gcc-cvs, or ChangeLogs, or other things like that is just way
> too much time.

What about writing a small script that parses the main ChangeLogs?  They are 
supposed to be uniformly formatted.  And ping messages shouldn't contain all 
the junk of previous messages, just the ChangeLog (and optionally the URL).

-- 
Eric Botcazou

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 06/08/2010 06:42 AM, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:05 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
>> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular
>> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do
>> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their
>> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party
>> tracking/pings.
>
> It seems that perhaps you are suggesting a status in between reviewers&
> W.A.A. contributors.

I don't understand.  WAA rights definitely allow you to shepherd and 
commit patches from people without svn access, even for patches you 
can't approve.

Paolo

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 8 June 2010 07:43, Chiheng Xu <chiheng.xu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Ben White <ja_walker@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Would a modestly modified copy of Bugzilla be workable for that something?
>> I.E. Patchzilla?
>
> Think about mercurial or git.  Every one can commit on his/her own
> local repository, and "publish" his/her repository.  Every one can
> pull other people's changes into his/her own repository, and can
> selectively merge interesting/valuable changes. Every patch have it's
> own branch. So called "approved patches" will be those patches whose
> branches have been merged. Then, you only need to think whether or not
> merge the branches the patches reside.
>
> If you use mercurial or git, every change will not be lost, every one
> can review and selectively merge any branch on his/her convenience.

That would only make matters worse in GCC, because reviewers are not
generally interested on spending time merging anyone's else changes.
What we are discussion here is a way to not lose track of the work of
sporadic contributors so they don't feel ignored by the GCC project.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 8 June 2010 10:43, Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org> wrote:
> On 06/08/2010 06:42 AM, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:05 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
>>>
>>> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular
>>> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do
>>> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their
>>> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party
>>> tracking/pings.
>>
>> It seems that perhaps you are suggesting a status in between reviewers&
>> W.A.A. contributors.
>
> I don't understand.  WAA rights definitely allow you to shepherd and commit
> patches from people without svn access, even for patches you can't approve.

And basile (and other WAA contributors), this would a nice
contribution. Asking people that do not appear to have access to svn
whether you want to commit their patches for them. And keeping them in
the loop (by showing them the commit) soy they feel within the
community and not outside of it.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 8 June 2010 11:17, Manuel López-Ibáñez <lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8 June 2010 10:43, Paolo Bonzini <bonzini@gnu.org> wrote:
>> On 06/08/2010 06:42 AM, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 2010-06-07 at 15:05 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
>>>>
>>>> So perhaps the thing to do is somehow separate patches from regular
>>>> contributors and irregular contributors.  A relatively easy way to do
>>>> this would be for a regular contributor to include a keyword in their
>>>> message to gcc-patches to mark the thread as not needing 3rd party
>>>> tracking/pings.
>>>
>>> It seems that perhaps you are suggesting a status in between reviewers&
>>> W.A.A. contributors.
>>
>> I don't understand.  WAA rights definitely allow you to shepherd and commit
>> patches from people without svn access, even for patches you can't approve.
>
> And basile (and other WAA contributors), this would a nice
> contribution. Asking people that do not appear to have access to svn
> whether you want to commit their patches for them. And keeping them in

It should say: "whether they want you to commit their patches for them."

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 7 June 2010 22:43, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>
> The patch tracker (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Patch_Tracking) is not
> currently operating.
>
> Would anybody like to volunteer to get it working again?

I'm not volunteering, but I might look into it one day.  I already
have too little spare time for my libstdc++ (and C++ committee)
commitments, so it won't be soon.

If dberlin doesn't still have the code, it shouldn't be too hard to
reimplement, assuming the same model is desirable.

Since I wouldn't fancy setting up a mailbox, a script which
periodically crawls the gcc-patches archive might suffice. Finding
:ADDPATCH xxx: messages would be easy. :REVIEWMAIL: messages include
the In-Reply-To in the form of an <!-- X-Reference: --> comment in the
HTML, the last such comment seems to be the direct ancestor.
:REVIEWURL url: mails would obviously work, the url identifies the
message in the archive. :REVIEWID id: messages would work too, as the
id is known to the patch tracker.

It wouldn't need a database, a structured file of some sort would do,
and a CGI script which parsed that could produce an HTML page for
viewing.

Just a simple matter of programming ;)

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 3:53 AM, Eric Botcazou <ebotcazou@adacore.com> wrote:
>> Reading gcc-cvs, or ChangeLogs, or other things like that is just way
>> too much time.
>
> What about writing a small script that parses the main ChangeLogs?  They are
> supposed to be uniformly formatted.  And ping messages shouldn't contain all
> the junk of previous messages, just the ChangeLog (and optionally the URL).
>
> --
> Eric Botcazou
>

Are you volunteering to write that small script?

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 8:34 PM, Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> wrote:
> On 06/08/2010 02:20 AM, Manuel López-Ibáńez wrote:
>> Perhaps NightStrike can fine-tune his approach.
> By the way, I wonder how many contributors can even think taking
> seriously a message coming from "NightStrike". Not me, for sure...
>
> Paolo.
>

That's just being mean.  This is 2010.  People use aliases.  Would it
make you happier if my alias was Neil Samson instead of NightStrike?
Is it any more "real"?

Look, you don't want me to be here... fine.  I get it.  Enough is
enough already.  Technical disagreements are one thing.  Personal
attacks on me are just juvenile.

Re: Patch pinging

[Jeff Law]

On 06/08/10 09:01, NightStrike wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 8:34 PM, Paolo Carlini<paolo.carlini@oracle.com>  wrote:
>    
>> On 06/08/2010 02:20 AM, Manuel López-Ibáńez wrote:
>>      
>>> Perhaps NightStrike can fine-tune his approach.
>>>        
>> By the way, I wonder how many contributors can even think taking
>> seriously a message coming from "NightStrike". Not me, for sure...
>>
>> Paolo.
>>
>>      
> That's just being mean.  This is 2010.  People use aliases.  Would it
> make you happier if my alias was Neil Samson instead of NightStrike?
> Is it any more "real"?
>
> Look, you don't want me to be here... fine.  I get it.  Enough is
> enough already.  Technical disagreements are one thing.  Personal
> attacks on me are just juvenile.
>    
I don't see this as a personal attack.

Like Paolo, I'm a lot more likely to read a message from someone with a 
real name, or at least a name that sounds real.

Jeff

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:21 AM, Jeff Law <law@redhat.com> wrote:
> On 06/08/10 09:01, NightStrike wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 8:34 PM, Paolo Carlini<paolo.carlini@oracle.com>
>>  wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On 06/08/2010 02:20 AM, Manuel López-Ibáńez wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps NightStrike can fine-tune his approach.
>>>>
>>>
>>> By the way, I wonder how many contributors can even think taking
>>> seriously a message coming from "NightStrike". Not me, for sure...
>>>
>>> Paolo.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> That's just being mean.  This is 2010.  People use aliases.  Would it
>> make you happier if my alias was Neil Samson instead of NightStrike?
>> Is it any more "real"?
>>
>> Look, you don't want me to be here... fine.  I get it.  Enough is
>> enough already.  Technical disagreements are one thing.  Personal
>> attacks on me are just juvenile.
>>
>
> I don't see this as a personal attack.
>
> Like Paolo, I'm a lot more likely to read a message from someone with a real
> name, or at least a name that sounds real.

Maybe not a personal attack, but it certainly could have been
expressed in a less offensive way.

I think the offered service might help improve responsiveness of the
GCC Community to patches.  Maybe we should create a generic "GCC Patch
Ping" account.  Constructive suggestions would be much more helpful in
this thread.

David

Re: Patch pinging

[H.J. Lu]

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 10:43 PM, Chiheng Xu <chiheng.xu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Ben White <ja_walker@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Would a modestly modified copy of Bugzilla be workable for that something?
>> I.E. Patchzilla?
>
> Think about mercurial or git.  Every one can commit on his/her own
> local repository, and "publish" his/her repository.  Every one can
> pull other people's changes into his/her own repository, and can
> selectively merge interesting/valuable changes. Every patch have it's
> own branch. So called "approved patches" will be those patches whose
> branches have been merged. Then, you only need to think whether or not
> merge the branches the patches reside.
>
> If you use mercurial or git, every change will not be lost, every one
> can review and selectively merge any branch on his/her convenience.
>

git is an excellent tool to create and share patches. Maybe we should
have an open gcc git mirror with gitweb and every contributor can create
his/her own branches and publish them.


-- 
H.J.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 8 June 2010 17:42, H.J. Lu <hjl.tools@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> git is an excellent tool to create and share patches. Maybe we should
> have an open gcc git mirror with gitweb and every contributor can create
> his/her own branches and publish them.

http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GitMirror

I don't see how such a thing solves the issue of patches from
first-time contributors being ignored.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Tobias Burnus]

On 06/08/2010 05:42 PM, H.J. Lu wrote:
>> Think about mercurial or git.  Every one can commit on his/her own
>> local repository, and "publish" his/her repository.  [...]
> 
> git is an excellent tool to create and share patches. Maybe we should
> have an open gcc git mirror with gitweb and every contributor can create
> his/her own branches and publish them.

Well, we do: Goto http://repo.or.cz/w/official-gcc.git and click on "fork".

I do like Git, but Git seems to make mostly sense if you have a small
project on which you are working. If you have only a small patch (or a
collection of small and unrelated patches), it won't help much.

Additionally, I do not think that pulling from a branch will happen -
rather that one creates patches from an (published or unpublished) git
repository and submits them like normal.

Thus, I do not think it helps with patch reviewing/tracking, though I
believe it helps with developing patches.

Tobias,
who happily uses his private GCC git repository, which does not diverge
much from the git master.

Re: Patch pinging

[Eric Botcazou]

> Are you volunteering to write that small script?

If nothing better comes out, why not, but resurrecting the Patch Tracker seems 
to be a more appealing idea.

-- 
Eric Botcazou

Re: Patch pinging

[Basile Starynkevitch]

On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 09:21 -0600, Jeff Law wrote:
> >
> > Look, you don't want me to be here... fine.  I get it.  Enough is
> > enough already.  Technical disagreements are one thing.  Personal
> > attacks on me are just juvenile.
> >    
> I don't see this as a personal attack.
> 
> Like Paolo, I'm a lot more likely to read a message from someone with a 
> real name, or at least a name that sounds real.


I also agree with Paolo, and I am not sure you could entirely hide your
true (legal) identity.

To commit code to GCC, you need to have signed some legal document with
FSF (e.g. a copyright transfer or disclaimer). I am not a lawyer, but I
would guess that for that document you'll need to reveal who you are.

Therefore, what is the point of hiding your name on this list? AFAIU,
someone (at least at FSF or at Codesourcery or at the organization
responsible of gcc.gnu.org subversion server) legally needs to know who
you are, and which legal document covers your contributions to GCC.

There is no personal attack involved. 

Cheers.
-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/08/2010 08:40 PM, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
> There is no personal attack involved.
For sure. Sorry if my quick remark could be interpreted in another way.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Basile Starynkevitch]

On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 11:18 +0200, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't understand.  WAA rights definitely allow you to shepherd and commit
> >> patches from people without svn access, even for patches you can't approve.
> >
> > And basile (and other WAA contributors), this would a nice
> > contribution. Asking people that do not appear to have access to svn
> > whether you want to commit their patches for them. And keeping them in
> 
> It should say: "whether they want you to commit their patches for them."

I thought that for legal reasons, WAA contributors should not commit
code which is not theirs, or on which they did not see the legal
copyright transfer or disclaimer form for the FSF.

Since such legal documents are not public, that restriction means in
practice that I could only reasonably commit only code that either I
have written, or that someone covered by the same legal documents than I
am, have written. For me Basile, the only person in that case I can
think of today is Jeremie Salvucci (my intern) and possibly Marc
Duranton (who started worked at CEA LIST, my employer).

So I don't understand how can I svn-commit code which I don't have
written (or which has not been written by a near colleague covered by
the same legal documents).


Could someone explain what exactly are the rules for committing code?

I probably am understanding them too restrictively.

Cheers.


-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 06/08/2010 09:21 PM, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-06-08 at 11:18 +0200, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I don't understand.  WAA rights definitely allow you to shepherd and commit
>>>> patches from people without svn access, even for patches you can't approve.
>>>
>>> And basile (and other WAA contributors), this would a nice
>>> contribution. Asking people that do not appear to have access to svn
>>> whether you want to commit their patches for them. And keeping them in
>>
>> It should say: "whether they want you to commit their patches for them."
>
> I thought that for legal reasons, WAA contributors should not commit
> code which is not theirs, or on which they did not see the legal
> copyright transfer or disclaimer form for the FSF.

You can either ask someone to look up the copyright status or commit 
patches that are trivial.  The copyright status of a person is usually 
clear from the mailing list; if you're particularly interested in a 
patch and you cannot figure out their status you can ask on-list or 
off-list.

Here are a few of the people with access to the copyright list: me, Ian, 
Benjamin Koznik, David Edelsohn, Andreas Schwab, Joseph Myers, Ralf 
Wildenhues.  This is not a complete list, just people that I remember.

> So I don't understand how can I svn-commit code which I don't have
> written (or which has not been written by a near colleague covered by
> the same legal documents).

Or which has not been written by someone whose patches already got in 
the tree, so that you can already trust him/her.

BTW, several companies have a company-wide copyright assignment too. 
The only one I can name that may need some help with commits is Mozilla.

Paolo

Re: Patch pinging

[Dave Korn]

On 08/06/2010 20:31, Paolo Bonzini wrote:

> Here are a few of the people with access to the copyright list: me, Ian,
> Benjamin Koznik, David Edelsohn, Andreas Schwab, Joseph Myers, Ralf
> Wildenhues.  This is not a complete list, just people that I remember.

  I also have access and am happy to be asked to check the list to help get a
patch cleared.

    cheers,
      DaveK

Re: Patch pinging

[Martin Guy]

On 6/8/10, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
> Are you volunteering to write that small script?

DUnno, are you volunteering to write that small script?

You're the only one here actually volunteering a forwardgoing
commitment of their time here to improve GCC's development in this
way, it seems (and mostly just getting vilified for it, for using a
bizarre camelcase name!)

What I expected to happen was that you would start doing whta you
envision should happen by hand, and would then get so bored at doing
it that out of laziness you'd automate it somehow. :)

Still, we'll see...

    M

Re: Patch pinging

[Chiheng Xu]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:55 PM, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
> On 06/08/2010 05:42 PM, H.J. Lu wrote:
>>> Think about mercurial or git.  Every one can commit on his/her own
>>> local repository, and "publish" his/her repository.  [...]
>>
>> git is an excellent tool to create and share patches. Maybe we should
>> have an open gcc git mirror with gitweb and every contributor can create
>> his/her own branches and publish them.
>
> Well, we do: Goto http://repo.or.cz/w/official-gcc.git and click on "fork".
>
> I do like Git, but Git seems to make mostly sense if you have a small
> project on which you are working. If you have only a small patch (or a
> collection of small and unrelated patches), it won't help much.
>
> Additionally, I do not think that pulling from a branch will happen -
> rather that one creates patches from an (published or unpublished) git
> repository and submits them like normal.
>
> Thus, I do not think it helps with patch reviewing/tracking, though I
> believe it helps with developing patches.
>
> Tobias,
> who happily uses his private GCC git repository, which does not diverge
> much from the git master.
>

The philosophy behind DVCS(mercurial or git) is that,  any software
project is an evolution tree, like the one of the lives of Planet
Earth.  This evolution tree has a root, which is the UCA(Ultimate
Common Ancestor) of all lives. For the lives of Planet Earth, UCA may
be some kind of ancient micro-organism. For a software, UCA would be
the revision zero.

Everyone can make change to any revision, do some minor improvement,
to let the evolution tree to branch and grow.  Everyone can merge
other people's valuable branch/change in his/her own branch, this is
like bi-sex reproduction. Everyone can make his/her branch more
perfect to gain some survival advantage. The changes that will be in
the final releases is those whose branches have been merged into
trunk.  Everyone strive to let his/her branch be merged, otherwise
his/her branch will die. If someone's branch are rejected, he/she can
try to redo his change, maybe from an newer trunk revision. When
his/her changes meet some criteria, he/she can ask someone to review
his branches and selectively merge.

The died branch are never lost, it is stored in the repositories
persistently, and can revive at any time.

If someone's branch diverge far from the trunk, it may be very hard to
merge. So branches from a relatively newer trunk revision and have not
too many changes will be desirable.

In this method, you only need to note the branch(and its URL) to
review, instead of attach the patches.



By the way, I found mercurial are easier to learn and use.





-- 
Chiheng Xu
Wuhan,China

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Martin Guy <martinwguy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/8/10, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Are you volunteering to write that small script?
>
> DUnno, are you volunteering to write that small script?

Sorry, no :(

> You're the only one here actually volunteering a forwardgoing
> commitment of their time here to improve GCC's development in this
> way, it seems (and mostly just getting vilified for it, for using a
> bizarre camelcase name!)

Thanks for noticing :)

> What I expected to happen was that you would start doing whta you
> envision should happen by hand, and would then get so bored at doing
> it that out of laziness you'd automate it somehow. :)

I was thinking of ways to make it a little easier.  What I proposed
was really not all that time consuming, though.

> Still, we'll see...

Apparently not :(

Re: Patch pinging

[Martin Guy]

>  > Still, we'll see...
>
>  Apparently not :(

Why not? At most, you just need not to make sure nothing ever send
mail to people who think that kind of thing is bozoid...

    M

Re: Patch pinging

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Wed, 9 Jun 2010, Dave Korn wrote:
>> Here are a few of the people with access to the copyright list: me, Ian,
>> Benjamin Koznik, David Edelsohn, Andreas Schwab, Joseph Myers, Ralf
>> Wildenhues.  This is not a complete list, just people that I remember.
> I also have access and am happy to be asked to check the list to help 
> get a patch cleared.

Same here, and I am doing this somewhat regularily, in fact. :-)

Gerald

Re: Patch pinging

[Quentin Neill]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 June 2010 22:43, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>>
>> The patch tracker (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Patch_Tracking) is not
>> currently operating.
>>
>> Would anybody like to volunteer to get it working again?
>
> I'm not volunteering, but I might look into it one day....
>
> If dberlin doesn't still have the code, it shouldn't be too hard...
>
> ... a script which periodically crawls the gcc-patches archive might suffice...

I have a python script which crawls, caches, and parses the gcc-cvs
(and binutils-cvs) email archive pages.  I wrote it to help another
script that correlates patch revisions in a branch (where the
Changelog refers to revisions on the trunk) back to the useful
Changelog entries in the trunk.

I could submit that to contrib, it could be modified to scrape most of
the information above into a single monthly report.

Any interest?
-- 
Quentin Neill

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 10 June 2010 22:05, Quentin Neill <quentin.neill.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 6:30 AM, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 7 June 2010 22:43, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
>>>
>>> The patch tracker (http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/GCC_Patch_Tracking) is not
>>> currently operating.
>>>
>>> Would anybody like to volunteer to get it working again?
>>
>> I'm not volunteering, but I might look into it one day....
>>
>> If dberlin doesn't still have the code, it shouldn't be too hard...
>>
>> ... a script which periodically crawls the gcc-patches archive might suffice...
>
> I have a python script which crawls, caches, and parses the gcc-cvs
> (and binutils-cvs) email archive pages.  I wrote it to help another
> script that correlates patch revisions in a branch (where the
> Changelog refers to revisions on the trunk) back to the useful
> Changelog entries in the trunk.
>
> I could submit that to contrib, it could be modified to scrape most of
> the information above into a single monthly report.
>
> Any interest?

I don't think such a script would be better than
http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/list/

What we would need is some way to detect that patches have been
committed. Otherwise that list will grow uncontrollably very fast.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 12:05 PM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> What we would need is some way to detect that patches have been
> committed. Otherwise that list will grow uncontrollably very fast.

Imagine that :)

Re: Patch pinging

[Quentin Neill]

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10 June 2010 22:05, Quentin Neill <quentin.neill.gnu@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have a python script which crawls, caches, and parses the gcc-cvs
>> (and binutils-cvs) email archive pages.  I wrote it to help another
>> script that correlates patch revisions in a branch (where the
>> Changelog refers to revisions on the trunk) back to the useful
>> Changelog entries in the trunk.
>>
>> I could submit that to contrib, it could be modified to scrape most of
>> the information above into a single monthly report.
>>
>> Any interest?
>
> I don't think such a script would be better than
> http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/list/
>
> What we would need is some way to detect that patches have been
> committed. Otherwise that list will grow uncontrollably very fast.
> Cheers,
> Manuel.

I guess what I was thinking was the script would crawl the patch
postings and then the patch submissions and then print a correlation
report.

Once the correlation is working well enough, the outstanding patch
postings would be the only thing in the list.

Does the patchwork client that interacts with
http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/gcc/list/ do any correlation?
-- 
Quentin Neill

Re: Patch pinging

[Gerald Pfeifer]

On Mon, 7 Jun 2010, Ben White wrote:
> Would a modestly modified copy of Bugzilla be workable for that 
> something? I.E. Patchzilla?

We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.

Gerald

Re: Patch pinging

[Tobias Burnus]

Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
> being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
> and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.

See http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43011 for more details.

I concur an update would be very useful!

Tobias

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 27 June 2010 11:32, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>> We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
>> being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
>> and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.
>
> See http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43011 for more details.
>
> I concur an update would be very useful!

Bah! Someone already volunteered to do it in several occasions.
Myself, a long time ago. Someone else a few months ago, Frederic
Buclin volunteered to help and Nightstrike in that very same PR. The
answer was silence. It is not a matter of volunteers. The problem is
elsewhere, deeper in the (mal)functioning of GCC as a project.

Cheers,

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Guenther]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 June 2010 11:32, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
>> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>>> We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
>>> being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
>>> and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.
>>
>> See http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43011 for more details.
>>
>> I concur an update would be very useful!
>
> Bah! Someone already volunteered to do it in several occasions.
> Myself, a long time ago. Someone else a few months ago, Frederic
> Buclin volunteered to help and Nightstrike in that very same PR. The
> answer was silence. It is not a matter of volunteers. The problem is
> elsewhere, deeper in the (mal)functioning of GCC as a project.

GCC is not malefunctioning.  Please do not generalize this way.  Thanks.

The issue is that the only person familiar with the GCC bugzilla
deployment left and that access to the project hosting machines
is (obviously) restricted.  If you want to help with bugzilla it is best
to coordinate with overseers, not to rant about this on any gcc
specific list or in bugzilla.

Richard.

> Cheers,
>
> Manuel.
>

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27 June 2010 11:32, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
>> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>>> We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
>>> being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
>>> and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.
>>
>> See http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43011 for more details.
>>
>> I concur an update would be very useful!
>
> Bah! Someone already volunteered to do it in several occasions.
> Myself, a long time ago. Someone else a few months ago, Frederic
> Buclin volunteered to help and Nightstrike in that very same PR. The
> answer was silence. It is not a matter of volunteers. The problem is
> elsewhere, deeper in the (mal)functioning of GCC as a project.

Manuel,

The GNU Toolchain projects currently are hampered by a lack of
volunteers or sponsors to maintain the support infrastructure around
the core projects.  The GNU Toolchain projects have not retained a
diverse community to work on infrastructure like Bugzilla, Issue /
Patch Tracking, Repository, and Wiki, which usually are
under-appreciated.  No companies have stepped up to pay for such work,
unlike other projects (other than "let us take it over").

However, characterizing the GCC project as malfunctioning is not
correct.  Acting like a victim because the project does not do what
you want speaks for itself.  And repeatedly complaining about the
project certainly does not help GCC attract and inspire new
volunteers.  Practical suggestions and contributions of resources
would be helpful.

Thanks, David

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 27 June 2010 20:45, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 5:43 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
> <lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 27 June 2010 11:32, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
>>> Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
>>>> We actually do have an issue with the Bugzilla instance on gcc.gnu.org
>>>> being rather old, so if anyone with Bugzilla foo wants to donate time
>>>> and effort, looking into upgrading that might be even preferrable.
>>>
>>> See http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=43011 for more details.
>>>
>>> I concur an update would be very useful!
>>
>> Bah! Someone already volunteered to do it in several occasions.
>> Myself, a long time ago. Someone else a few months ago, Frederic
>> Buclin volunteered to help and Nightstrike in that very same PR. The
>> answer was silence. It is not a matter of volunteers. The problem is
>> elsewhere, deeper in the (mal)functioning of GCC as a project.
>
> Manuel,
>
> The GNU Toolchain projects currently are hampered by a lack of
> volunteers or sponsors to maintain the support infrastructure around
> the core projects.  The GNU Toolchain projects have not retained a
> diverse community to work on infrastructure like Bugzilla, Issue /
> Patch Tracking, Repository, and Wiki, which usually are
> under-appreciated.  No companies have stepped up to pay for such work,
> unlike other projects (other than "let us take it over").

In this case, as I point out above, there were volunteers. They didn't
get any answer.

I didn't know this was a problem affecting the whole GNU Toolchain. It
is clear that I don't have the whole picture.

> However, characterizing the GCC project as malfunctioning is not
> correct.  Acting like a victim because the project does not do what

"Malfunctioning" is perhaps the incorrect term. And I should have said
"a malfunctioning" not "the malfunctioning". I am referring strictly
to this particular issue and to GCC as a free-software
volunteer-community-based project, not as the quality of the software,
not as a corporate project, not to anything else. And of course, this
is a personal, debatable opinion, that certainly some people do not
share (although I feel some do).

I do believe that it is odd that one of the most important
free-software projects in terms of widespread use, a free-software
project that has a technical quality comparable and often superior to
the closed-source counterparts, is still using a bugzilla version that
reached end-of-life more than 2 years ago.

> you want speaks for itself.  And repeatedly complaining about the
> project certainly does not help GCC attract and inspire new
> volunteers.  Practical suggestions and contributions of resources
> would be helpful.

I didn't feel that was right to ask for volunteers again to do
something, when there have been volunteers and they have been ignored.
It is true that frustration does not justify an outburst, specially
since I am not volunteering anymore.

Your last two sentences are definitely right. I don't have anything
else new to propose. It is a difficult situation. Good luck. Sorry for
the noise.

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:

> I do believe that it is odd that one of the most important
> free-software projects in terms of widespread use, a free-software
> project that has a technical quality comparable and often superior to
> the closed-source counterparts, is still using a bugzilla version that
> reached end-of-life more than 2 years ago.
>
> I didn't feel that was right to ask for volunteers again to do
> something, when there have been volunteers and they have been ignored.
> It is true that frustration does not justify an outburst, specially
> since I am not volunteering anymore.
>
> Your last two sentences are definitely right. I don't have anything
> else new to propose. It is a difficult situation. Good luck. Sorry for
> the noise.

Manuel,

As you mention, GCC is one of the most important Free Software
projects.  We rely on the infrastructure, like Bugzilla and
Subversion.  While we appreciate someone volunteering to upgrade the
infrastructure, that someone needs to be experienced and
knowledgeable.  It would not help the project to have a failed
conversion or partial conversion or a lack of future support.  The
current infrastructure may be old, but it works and the system
administrators are able to keep it running.

I do not know what happened in the past with your previous offer.  I
am sorry that you are unable to help now.  Not only do we need a
volunteer, but we need a volunteer with realistic goals that the
leaders of the project have confidence in and one who shows
perseverance.

Thanks, David

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 11:35 PM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 3:45 PM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
> <lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I do believe that it is odd that one of the most important
>> free-software projects in terms of widespread use, a free-software
>> project that has a technical quality comparable and often superior to
>> the closed-source counterparts, is still using a bugzilla version that
>> reached end-of-life more than 2 years ago.
>>
>> I didn't feel that was right to ask for volunteers again to do
>> something, when there have been volunteers and they have been ignored.
>> It is true that frustration does not justify an outburst, specially
>> since I am not volunteering anymore.
>>
>> Your last two sentences are definitely right. I don't have anything
>> else new to propose. It is a difficult situation. Good luck. Sorry for
>> the noise.
>
> Manuel,
>
> As you mention, GCC is one of the most important Free Software
> projects.  We rely on the infrastructure, like Bugzilla and
> Subversion.  While we appreciate someone volunteering to upgrade the
> infrastructure, that someone needs to be experienced and
> knowledgeable.  It would not help the project to have a failed
> conversion or partial conversion or a lack of future support.  The
> current infrastructure may be old, but it works and the system
> administrators are able to keep it running.
>
> I do not know what happened in the past with your previous offer.  I
> am sorry that you are unable to help now.  Not only do we need a
> volunteer, but we need a volunteer with realistic goals that the
> leaders of the project have confidence in and one who shows
> perseverance.
>
> Thanks, David
>

Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
go about it.

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:10 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
> go about it.

So who actually said no?

David

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:39 AM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:10 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
>> go about it.
>
> So who actually said no?
>
> David
>

The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
clarification.

You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:39 AM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:10 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
>> go about it.
>
> So who actually said no?
>
> David
>

The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
clarification.

You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/28/2010 04:11 PM, NightStrike wrote:
> You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.
>   
From "The Hound of the Baskervilles", Arthur Conan Doyle, 1902:

    "Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded
into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the
middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of
pasting printed words upon it."

Thus, I disagree about the century.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 10:08 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:

> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
> account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
> clarification.

Other people can create sourceware accounts. And ignore self-righteous people.

Are you still volunteering to do the work?

David

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 1:13 PM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 10:08 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
>> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
>> account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
>> clarification.
>
> Other people can create sourceware accounts. And ignore self-righteous people.
>
> Are you still volunteering to do the work?
>
> David
>

Yup

Re: Patch pinging

[Basile Starynkevitch]

On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 10:08 -0400, NightStrike wrote:
> 
> You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.

Everyone realize that.

But you (whoever you really are) should also realize that to submit
patches and have them accepted, you need to have some legal papers done
with the FSF (copyright transfer or disclaimer, see the "legal
prerequisites" section of http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html at first).
And I would be very surprised if the FSF accepted a legal paper without
a real legal name.

So the simplest way is just to submit code with your real name &
identity.

And are you so ashamed of your source code or of your name to want to
keep in hidden while contributing to GCC?

Notice that nobody asks you to contribute to GCC, you apparently seems
to want to contribute (but I am not sure of that, maybe you don't care
about GCC at all - this is perfectly your right.).

You definitely could find that the legal prerequisites are inadequate
(and I could even perhaps partly agree on that; my personal perception
is that they are a little bit too strong, but I am not a lawyer, and not
a US citizen), however, they are the rule of the GCC game (which nobody
forces you to play).

While I do understand the reasons people want to hide with a pseudonym
on many forums (or social sites), I don't understand why someone want to
hide his identity when contributing to GCC (and therefore, after having
done the legal work of getting the legal papers signed...).

Cheers.
-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Kenner]

> While I do understand the reasons people want to hide with a pseudonym
> on many forums (or social sites), I don't understand why someone want to
> hide his identity when contributing to GCC (and therefore, after having
> done the legal work of getting the legal papers signed...).

I don't either.  Poeple have to be able to check that there's a
corresponding assignment form signed when somebody submits a patch.  If the
person submitting the patch hides their name, that task becomes extremely
difficult.  As you say, this is not a social forum: there's no reason to be
secretive here.

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 4:51 PM, Basile Starynkevitch
<basile@starynkevitch.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 10:08 -0400, NightStrike wrote:
>>
>> You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.
>
> Everyone realize that.
>
> But you (whoever you really are) should also realize that to submit
> patches and have them accepted, you need to have some legal papers done
> with the FSF (copyright transfer or disclaimer, see the "legal
> prerequisites" section of http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html at first).
> And I would be very surprised if the FSF accepted a legal paper without
> a real legal name.
>
> So the simplest way is just to submit code with your real name &
> identity.
>
> And are you so ashamed of your source code or of your name to want to
> keep in hidden while contributing to GCC?
>
> Notice that nobody asks you to contribute to GCC, you apparently seems
> to want to contribute (but I am not sure of that, maybe you don't care
> about GCC at all - this is perfectly your right.).
>
> You definitely could find that the legal prerequisites are inadequate
> (and I could even perhaps partly agree on that; my personal perception
> is that they are a little bit too strong, but I am not a lawyer, and not
> a US citizen), however, they are the rule of the GCC game (which nobody
> forces you to play).
>
> While I do understand the reasons people want to hide with a pseudonym
> on many forums (or social sites), I don't understand why someone want to
> hide his identity when contributing to GCC (and therefore, after having
> done the legal work of getting the legal papers signed...).

Basile,

What are you talking about?  Do you even know what his comment is
about?  This is not about him hiding his identity from the GCC
community or the FSF.

Why do you feel a need to add a comment to nearly every discussion thread?

- David

Re: Patch pinging

[Tobias Burnus]

(Off topic)

Basile Starynkevitch wrote:
> But you (whoever you really are) should also realize that to submit
> patches and have them accepted, you need to have some legal papers done
> with the FSF (copyright transfer or disclaimer, see the "legal
> prerequisites" section of http://gcc.gnu.org/contribute.html at first).
> And I would be very surprised if the FSF accepted a legal paper without
> a real legal name.

Well, the FSF needs a the real name (and a valid postal address), but
they do accept pseudonyms:

"If a contributor wants the FSF to publish only a pseudonym, that is ok.
The contributor should say this, and state the desired pseudonym, when
answering the request- form. The actual legal papers will use the real
name, but the FSF will publish only the pseudonym."

Quote from:
http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/html_node/Copyright-Papers.html#Copyright-Papers


Can we - if possible - concentrate again at improving GCC and its
infrastructure rather than doing this phantom debate? In case of
Nightstrike, we have an active tester and thus contributor to especially
MinGW64, who is also willing to work on updating Bugzilla - I do not see
any reason to deter him from doing this.


Tobias,
who also prefers real names, but he understands that some prefer to
remain anonymous, and accepts this

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 28 June 2010 23:25, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
>
> Can we - if possible - concentrate again at improving GCC and its
> infrastructure rather than doing this phantom debate? In case of
> Nightstrike, we have an active tester and thus contributor to especially
> MinGW64, who is also willing to work on updating Bugzilla - I do not see
> any reason to deter him from doing this.

Agreed. Thanks for writing this.

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[Basile Starynkevitch]

On Mon, 2010-06-28 at 23:35 +0200, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> On 28 June 2010 23:25, Tobias Burnus <burnus@net-b.de> wrote:
> >
> > Can we - if possible - concentrate again at improving GCC and its
> > infrastructure rather than doing this phantom debate? In case of
> > Nightstrike, we have an active tester and thus contributor to especially
> > MinGW64, who is also willing to work on updating Bugzilla - I do not see
> > any reason to deter him from doing this.
> 
> Agreed. Thanks for writing this.

My public apologies; I probably misunderstood most of the debate
(and I am not a native English speaker, and even with the help of a
dictionnary, I don't understand all the implicit parts of messages)

I am glad that Nightstrike (and I ignored that) contribute to MinGW64 (a
task I consider very difficult).

Cheers.

-- 
Basile STARYNKEVITCH         http://starynkevitch.net/Basile/
email: basile<at>starynkevitch<dot>net mobile: +33 6 8501 2359
8, rue de la Faiencerie, 92340 Bourg La Reine, France
*** opinions {are only mines, sont seulement les miennes} ***

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Kenner]

> "If a contributor wants the FSF to publish only a pseudonym, that is ok.
> The contributor should say this, and state the desired pseudonym, when
> answering the request- form. The actual legal papers will use the real
> name, but the FSF will publish only the pseudonym."

I was unaware of that.  I stand corrected (but still don't understand why
anybody would want to do that in a forum such as this).

Re: Patch pinging

[Gerald Pfeifer]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 653 bytes --]

On Sun, 27 Jun 2010, Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> Bah! Someone already volunteered to do it in several occasions.
> Myself, a long time ago. Someone else a few months ago, Frederic
> Buclin volunteered to help and Nightstrike in that very same PR. The
> answer was silence. It is not a matter of volunteers. The problem is
> elsewhere, deeper in the (mal)functioning of GCC as a project.

Manuel, I am sorry if my request for a volunteer came across badly.  I
simply had not been aware of your previous offer and the one of others.
No bad intent whatsover, and I will do my best to support whoever wants
to help with getting Bugzilla updated.

Gerald

Re: Patch pinging

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Mon, 28 Jun 2010, Basile Starynkevitch wrote:

> But you (whoever you really are) should also realize that to submit
> patches and have them accepted, you need to have some legal papers done

Bugzilla is not FSF-copyright code, and I see no reason we should require 
assignments for people working on our Bugzilla installation (although 
people without assignments must understand that they do not have 
permission to commit to the source repository or the main webpages even if 
they are in the "gcc" group that gives them the technical ability to do 
so).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 5:56 PM, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald@pfeifer.com> wrote:

> I will do my best to support whoever wants
> to help with getting Bugzilla updated.

Gerald,

NightStrike has volunteered to help upgrade Bugzilla.

How do we move forward?

- David

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:39 AM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:10 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
>>> go about it.
>>
>> So who actually said no?
>>
>> David
>>
>
> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
> account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
> clarification.
>
> You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.

The overseers as a whole were not comfortable giving an account to
somebody who was not willing to provide his real name.  I concurred in
that decision.  Giving somebody a shell account on gcc.gnu.org means
giving them a very high level of trust.  There are quite a few people
who could translate a shell account on gcc.gnu.org into a number of
difficult-to-detect attacks on the entire FLOSS infrastructure,
including the kernel, the source code control systems, etc.  It's hard
for us to get to the required level of trust in somebody whom we have
never met and who won't provide any real world contact information.

NightStrike, thanks for volunteering, and thanks for being honest about
the name issue rather than simply making something up.  I'm sorry that
it won't work out.

Manu, I have no problem supporting you in implementing a Bugzilla
upgrade if you are still interested.

I think one of the unfortunate causes of the lack of response to
volunteers is that PR 43011 was, sensibly enough, filed against the gcc
repository, but was not CC'ed to overseers@gcc.gnu.org.  I would like to
encourage our bugmasters to consider CC'ing overseers for issues related
to infrastructure.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:39 PM, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
> NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 7:39 AM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 12:10 AM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ian had confidence in me.  He also liked the proposal I set for how to
>>>> go about it.
>>>
>>> So who actually said no?
>>>
>>> David
>>>
>>
>> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
>> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a sourceware
>> account for me.  He then ignored my followup emails asking for
>> clarification.
>>
>> You guys need to realize how online identities work in this century.
>
> The overseers as a whole were not comfortable giving an account to
> somebody who was not willing to provide his real name.  I concurred in
> that decision.

It would have been courteous for you -- or Frederic, or anyone else --
to have communicated that to me instead of just ignoring me.

> Giving somebody a shell account on gcc.gnu.org means
> giving them a very high level of trust.

Then you should consider using legitimate account creation policies.
If I just put "John Smith" in the sign up form, I would have gotten an
account.  How does that change anything?  Again, welcome to 2010.

> There are quite a few people
> who could translate a shell account on gcc.gnu.org into a number of
> difficult-to-detect attacks on the entire FLOSS infrastructure,
> including the kernel, the source code control systems, etc.  It's hard
> for us to get to the required level of trust in somebody whom we have
> never met and who won't provide any real world contact information.

No one ever asked for any real world contact information.  Frederic
asked for a real-looking name.  That's just dumb.  If I wanted to
launch attacks on "the entire FLOSS infrastructure," do you really
think I would be going about it this way?

> NightStrike, thanks for volunteering, and thanks for being honest about
> the name issue rather than simply making something up.  I'm sorry that
> it won't work out.

What you guys need to realize is that if I did just make something up,
there wouldn't be an issue.  Your policies are vintage computer
security circa 1963.  That's what's so darn frustrating about this
whole entire thing.  You don't have any actual security, but yet you
think I'm going to try to bring down everything GNU.  That's just
awesome.



Recently there was a thread about why people don't contribute to GCC.
Well, here you go.  I tried.  Twice in quick succession.  I was flamed
vigorously, much more off-list than on.  I've been getting personal
emails from people angry about my pseudonym since the day I started
posting on your mailing lists.  I was lambasted by countless people,
ignored by the ones that matter, and eventually shut out because of a
security policy that has no place in present day computing.
Wonderful.  Way to make someone feel welcome.

Why don't people contribute to GCC?  I've found my answer.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> It would have been courteous for you -- or Frederic, or anyone else --
> to have communicated that to me instead of just ignoring me.

Yes.  I was not part of the conversation stream.  I apologize on behalf
of Frank (not Frederic).  He should have replied.


>> Giving somebody a shell account on gcc.gnu.org means
>> giving them a very high level of trust.
>
> Then you should consider using legitimate account creation policies.
> If I just put "John Smith" in the sign up form, I would have gotten an
> account.  How does that change anything?  Again, welcome to 2010.

We normally only grant source code access to people who have signed a
copyright assignment with the FSF.  So for those cases we simply rely on
the FSF to perform some sort of verification.  You would have been an
unusual, perhaps unique, case: a shell account for somebody who has not
signed an FSF copyright assignment.


> What you guys need to realize is that if I did just make something up,
> there wouldn't be an issue.  Your policies are vintage computer
> security circa 1963.  That's what's so darn frustrating about this
> whole entire thing.  You don't have any actual security, but yet you
> think I'm going to try to bring down everything GNU.  That's just
> awesome.

We don't have nearly enough security, but I think that we have more than
you are suggesting.


> Recently there was a thread about why people don't contribute to GCC.
> Well, here you go.  I tried.  Twice in quick succession.  I was flamed
> vigorously, much more off-list than on.  I've been getting personal
> emails from people angry about my pseudonym since the day I started
> posting on your mailing lists.  I was lambasted by countless people,
> ignored by the ones that matter, and eventually shut out because of a
> security policy that has no place in present day computing.
> Wonderful.  Way to make someone feel welcome.
>
> Why don't people contribute to GCC?  I've found my answer.

Yes.  I was personally very disappointed by the way that people attacked
you for trying to help.

That said, I respect your right to choose to use a pseudonym, but I
think our requirement of dealing with real people is a reasonable one.
The free software community works on a web of trust and personal
relationships.  If you prefer to remain pseudonymous, then you must
accept that you will not be at the center of that web.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Jonathan Wakely]

On 29 June 2010 05:40, NightStrike wrote:
>
> Then you should consider using legitimate account creation policies.
> If I just put "John Smith" in the sign up form, I would have gotten an
> account.

Not necessarily, there are maintainers with approval rights who
haven't got shell access, it's very restricted.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 29 June 2010 01:39, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
>
> Manu, I have no problem supporting you in implementing a Bugzilla
> upgrade if you are still interested.

I won't have time before September for sure, most probably early October.

Still, I don't understand why a shell account is required to start
working on this. From what I understand, the scripts that need
conversion are not secret, so anyone can work on them. The bugzilla
customizations can be accessed with anonymous cvs, so whatever custom
changes we have made, they are accessible anonymously and they can be
ported to a new local bugzilla installation. In any case, patches
against a pristine bugzilla installation would need review. I am not
sure if copyright assignment is needed for all this. If so, then it
depends whether NightStrike would agree to sign papers for the FSF
with his real name. But...

NightStrike, even just starting a wiki page and making a list of
everything that needs adjusting and suggestions on how to implement
the changes would help incredibly whoever ends up committing the
changes. Right now, I wouldn't know where to start!

This whole issue has focussed in a little problem about the final step
(installing bugzilla in sourceware.org), whereas there is so much work
to do before reaching that step, that probably the person that starts
this work won't be the same that finally installs the new bugzilla
version. Take the opportunity that people are paying attention right
now and collect all the information that would be needed for this.
Then you will know if you need a shell account, a cvs account, a
copyright or just someone else to do that part on your behalf (I will
be willing to review and commit stuff).

Yes, I know that contributing to GCC seems sometimes like a fight and
finding the right loop-hole to achieve what you want. And sometimes,
you lose. On the other hand, the lack of a strong leadership means
that many times despite all the resistance and obstacles, you can find
a way to get done stuff if you manage to find the correct way to do it
(either by means of technical or social engineering, with the latter
being sometimes more important than the former) because there is not a
single person with the power to say no if you manage to convince
enough people. It is a matter of finding what is the root cause for
the resistance and approaching the problem in a way that overcomes
this root cause, while still producing the desired outcome (or a good
approximation as possible).

Personally, I don't give a fig what your real name is. I don't support
giving you (or anyone without a paper trail) shell access to
sourceware.org, but I don't think this is needed to contribute to GCC.
There is such a long list of useful stuff to be done that I could keep
a horde of anonymous contributors busy for years.

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 6:14 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> Still, I don't understand why a shell account is required to start
> working on this. From what I understand, the scripts that need
> conversion are not secret, so anyone can work on them. The bugzilla
> customizations can be accessed with anonymous cvs, so whatever custom
> changes we have made, they are accessible anonymously and they can be
> ported to a new local bugzilla installation. In any case, patches
> against a pristine bugzilla installation would need review. I am not
> sure if copyright assignment is needed for all this. If so, then it
> depends whether NightStrike would agree to sign papers for the FSF
> with his real name. But...

When I first offered to do it, several people told me that FSF
paperwork is not required for this effort.

I presented what I would need - access to the current code, as well as
the database.  That didn't have to be the real stuff, but what I
ultimately did is what jsm28 and iant told me to do.  A snapshot of
the database, as long as it is complete, would suffice.  It's not just
a matter of the bugzilla code, it's the db itself, too.

> NightStrike, even just starting a wiki page and making a list of
> everything that needs adjusting and suggestions on how to implement
> the changes would help incredibly whoever ends up committing the
> changes. Right now, I wouldn't know where to start!

Creating an outline of how to go about things that someone else will
ignore / throw away sounds like a bigger waste of time than trying to
jump through the patch pinging horror.

> This whole issue has focussed in a little problem about the final step
> (installing bugzilla in sourceware.org), whereas there is so much work
> to do before reaching that step, that probably the person that starts
> this work won't be the same that finally installs the new bugzilla
> version. Take the opportunity that people are paying attention right
> now and collect all the information that would be needed for this.
> Then you will know if you need a shell account, a cvs account, a
> copyright or just someone else to do that part on your behalf (I will
> be willing to review and commit stuff).

I already did all of that.  I was ready to start actually creating
incremental patches.

> Yes, I know that contributing to GCC seems sometimes like a fight and
> finding the right loop-hole to achieve what you want. And sometimes,
> you lose. On the other hand, the lack of a strong leadership means
> that many times despite all the resistance and obstacles, you can find
> a way to get done stuff if you manage to find the correct way to do it
> (either by means of technical or social engineering, with the latter
> being sometimes more important than the former)

That's not how you run a welcoming project that's trying to attract
new people and *grow*.  That's a recipe for stagnation.  When it takes
just as much if not more effort to fight your way through beligerent
curmudgeons than it does to do the actual work, then something is
wrong in the state of Denmark.

> Personally, I don't give a fig what your real name is. I don't support
> giving you (or anyone without a paper trail) shell access to
> sourceware.org, but I don't think this is needed to contribute to GCC.
> There is such a long list of useful stuff to be done that I could keep
> a horde of anonymous contributors busy for years.

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Kenner]

> The free software community works on a web of trust and personal
> relationships.  If you prefer to remain pseudonymous, then you must
> accept that you will not be at the center of that web.

I agree.  Openness is an important part of the free software community
and I don't believe that applies only to source code.  I think it's important
that the community know the people within it.

I reject the analogy with social forums, where anonymity has indeed become
an important part of Internet culture.  This is a professional, not a
social, community.  Nobody would expect to be able to work on software
development for a company if they refused to give their real name.  I don't
see why they should expect to be able to be part of the free software
community under similar circumstances.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 7:24 AM, Richard Kenner
<kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
>> The free software community works on a web of trust and personal
>> relationships.  If you prefer to remain pseudonymous, then you must
>> accept that you will not be at the center of that web.
>
> I agree.  Openness is an important part of the free software community
> and I don't believe that applies only to source code.  I think it's important
> that the community know the people within it.
>
> I reject the analogy with social forums, where anonymity has indeed become
> an important part of Internet culture.  This is a professional, not a
> social, community.  Nobody would expect to be able to work on software
> development for a company if they refused to give their real name.  I don't
> see why they should expect to be able to be part of the free software
> community under similar circumstances.
>

It's not just present on "social community" sites.  Look at the
entirety of sourceforge.  That's quite a large respository of free
software, and yet it consists 100% of fake-named people (and please
understand what I mean by that.)  It's even a place where projects get
tons of donations, and yet these people are completely anonymous.
I've received donations myself through SF, even from not just one, but
several very large corporations -- one of which you wouldn't believe
if I showed you the proof.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:34 AM, Jonathan Wakely <jwakely.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29 June 2010 05:40, NightStrike wrote:
>>
>> Then you should consider using legitimate account creation policies.
>> If I just put "John Smith" in the sign up form, I would have gotten an
>> account.
>
> Not necessarily, there are maintainers with approval rights who
> haven't got shell access, it's very restricted.
>

I was referring to the form I had to fill out, and the reason for rejection.

Re: Patch pinging

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

On 29 June 2010 13:23, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This whole issue has focussed in a little problem about the final step
>> (installing bugzilla in sourceware.org), whereas there is so much work
>> to do before reaching that step, that probably the person that starts
>> this work won't be the same that finally installs the new bugzilla
>> version. Take the opportunity that people are paying attention right
>> now and collect all the information that would be needed for this.
>> Then you will know if you need a shell account, a cvs account, a
>> copyright or just someone else to do that part on your behalf (I will
>> be willing to review and commit stuff).
>
> I already did all of that.  I was ready to start actually creating
> incremental patches.
>

So what is stopping you from posting these patches to gcc-patches or
sending them to the relevant maintainers? I still do not see the need
for a shell account.

Manuel.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 7:49 AM, Manuel López-Ibáñez
<lopezibanez@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 29 June 2010 13:23, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> This whole issue has focussed in a little problem about the final step
>>> (installing bugzilla in sourceware.org), whereas there is so much work
>>> to do before reaching that step, that probably the person that starts
>>> this work won't be the same that finally installs the new bugzilla
>>> version. Take the opportunity that people are paying attention right
>>> now and collect all the information that would be needed for this.
>>> Then you will know if you need a shell account, a cvs account, a
>>> copyright or just someone else to do that part on your behalf (I will
>>> be willing to review and commit stuff).
>>
>> I already did all of that.  I was ready to start actually creating
>> incremental patches.
>>
>
> So what is stopping you from posting these patches to gcc-patches or
> sending them to the relevant maintainers? I still do not see the need
> for a shell account.
>
> Manuel.
>

I think I've gotten a pretty good indication of what THAT would be
like.  But even then, I need a place to test the changes against the
db, and further, a place to make changes to said db.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> It's not just present on "social community" sites.  Look at the
> entirety of sourceforge.  That's quite a large respository of free
> software, and yet it consists 100% of fake-named people (and please
> understand what I mean by that.)  It's even a place where projects get
> tons of donations, and yet these people are completely anonymous.
> I've received donations myself through SF, even from not just one, but
> several very large corporations -- one of which you wouldn't believe
> if I showed you the proof.

It is quite true that gcc operates by different rules.  We've
established that you can contribute patches to gcc under a pseudonym,
but the FSF does require that you reveal your name to them.  The FSF
requirements are widely recognized as an obstacle to contributing to
gcc.  However, there are good reasons for requiring a paper trail, and
those reasons are based on events that actually happened, not merely on
theory.  I would like to change things too, but, because of that
history, saying "other projects do it this way" is not a sufficient
argument for change.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> I presented what I would need - access to the current code, as well as
> the database.

So as I understand it, you can access the code, right?  There is of
course nothing confidential in the bugs database.  I have put a copy
created by mysqldump at

ftp://gcc.gnu.org/pub/gcc/infrastructure/bugs-100629.dmp

It's 957,674,800 bytes.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
> NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> It's not just present on "social community" sites.  Look at the
>> entirety of sourceforge.  That's quite a large respository of free
>> software, and yet it consists 100% of fake-named people (and please
>> understand what I mean by that.)  It's even a place where projects get
>> tons of donations, and yet these people are completely anonymous.
>> I've received donations myself through SF, even from not just one, but
>> several very large corporations -- one of which you wouldn't believe
>> if I showed you the proof.
>
> It is quite true that gcc operates by different rules.  We've
> established that you can contribute patches to gcc under a pseudonym,
> but the FSF does require that you reveal your name to them.  The FSF
> requirements are widely recognized as an obstacle to contributing to
> gcc.  However, there are good reasons for requiring a paper trail, and
> those reasons are based on events that actually happened, not merely on
> theory.  I would like to change things too, but, because of that
> history, saying "other projects do it this way" is not a sufficient
> argument for change.
>
> Ian
>

Maybe there's a way to look at how other projects handle the same
issue, and find a different solution that's more workable for more
people.  I don't know what event you are specifically referring to in
the GCC history that created this situation, but I don't think it's
unreasonable to think that there'd be an alternate method of achieving
the same results.

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> Maybe there's a way to look at how other projects handle the same
> issue, and find a different solution that's more workable for more
> people.  I don't know what event you are specifically referring to in
> the GCC history that created this situation, but I don't think it's
> unreasonable to think that there'd be an alternate method of achieving
> the same results.

I am doing what I can.  However, looking at other projects doesn't help
very much because most other projects simply don't worry about these
issues.  That is, for example, why the Linux kernel was vulnerable to
the SCO lawsuit (I have heard that they have since adjusted their
practices to some extent).  The event in the FSF's past was the use of
code from Gosling's original Unix version of emacs.  The FSF believed
that it had received verbal rights to use the code, but when Gosling
sold his program to Unipress he denied ever granting that right, and
Unipress asked the FSF to stop using their code.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:39:11 -0700
Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:

> I am doing what I can.  However, looking at other projects doesn't help
> very much because most other projects simply don't worry about these
> issues.  That is, for example, why the Linux kernel was vulnerable to
> the SCO lawsuit 

I think it makes sense to know where your patches come from, but I hate
to see reasoning like this.  The Linux kernel wasn't sued - IBM was
sued.  Some of the stuff that was vaguely named on the rare occasion
when somebody at SCO could be bothered to specify anything already had
a loooong paper trail behind it - read-copy-update, for example.  SCO
was alleging misbehavior by a large corporation which very clearly put
its name behind everything it did.  Anonymous contributors had nothing
to do with it.

It should be noted that the SCO suit caused the Linux kernel code to be
put under a microscope in a way that few other projects have had to
endure.  The result was one mildly questionable patch from SGI which had
already been removed.  Despite the lack of a paper trail, the kernel's
code was squeaky-clean.

> (I have heard that they have since adjusted their
> practices to some extent).

We've gone to the "you must post under something that looks like a
plausible real-world name" approach, along with a requirement for a
signoff line in the patch that says you're authorized to contribute
it.  No paper, no ID checks.

jon

Re: Patch pinging

[Ian Lance Taylor]

Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> writes:

> On Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:39:11 -0700
> Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com> wrote:
>
>> I am doing what I can.  However, looking at other projects doesn't help
>> very much because most other projects simply don't worry about these
>> issues.  That is, for example, why the Linux kernel was vulnerable to
>> the SCO lawsuit 
>
> I think it makes sense to know where your patches come from, but I hate
> to see reasoning like this.  The Linux kernel wasn't sued - IBM was
> sued.

I'm tolerably familiar with the SCO case.  I know that the Linux kernel
wasn't sued--how could it be?  What I said was that the kernel was
vulnerable to the lawsuit, and I think that is accurate.  You will
recall that SCO started selling licenses to use the Linux kernel, and
indeed a few people did buy them.  I believe that the lawsuit did
somewhat crimp Linux adoption by corporations--I heard it mentioned
quite a bit on sales calls--and if the lawsuit had been based on
something more than hot air it could have been more serious.


> Some of the stuff that was vaguely named on the rare occasion
> when somebody at SCO could be bothered to specify anything already had
> a loooong paper trail behind it - read-copy-update, for example.  SCO
> was alleging misbehavior by a large corporation which very clearly put
> its name behind everything it did.  Anonymous contributors had nothing
> to do with it.

SCO made several different arguments.  One of them hinged on the fact
that there was no provenance for code contributed to the kernel.  This
was a key part of their FUD strategy: the kernel developers could not
show a paper trail, which gave SCO a wide window to allege that people
were taking corporate-developed code and contributing it illicitly.

> Despite the lack of a paper trail, the kernel's
> code was squeaky-clean.

Yes.  The point was the FUD, not the reality.


> We've gone to the "you must post under something that looks like a
> plausible real-world name" approach, along with a requirement for a
> signoff line in the patch that says you're authorized to contribute
> it.  No paper, no ID checks.

Thanks for the info.  So there is now a provenance, which is the point:
there is a more-or-less real person associated with each contribution.
I certainly would like the FSF to move to a similar model.  One of their
concerns is the lack of any international law for electronic signatures.
That is part of the reason they require the physical paperwork.

Ian

Re: Patch pinging

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:

> [...]
>> So who actually said no?
>
> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a account
> for me.

In consultation with other overseers, I rejected your request.  I did
not ask for a "real-looking-but-just-as-fake name", but a "real name".
You falsely presume zero vetting.

> He then ignored my followup emails asking for clarification.

You said no.  There was nothing further to discuss.


- FChE

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler <fche@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> [...]
>>> So who actually said no?
>>
>> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
>> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a account
>> for me.
>
> In consultation with other overseers, I rejected your request.  I did
> not ask for a "real-looking-but-just-as-fake name", but a "real name".
> You falsely presume zero vetting.

You missed my point, then.  What's in a name?  How would you know if
what I told you was true or not?

>> He then ignored my followup emails asking for clarification.
>
> You said no.  There was nothing further to discuss.

Not exactly.  I offered you an alternative, and I asked you a
question.  You ignored both.  You could very well have given me
feedback, explained what was going on, let me know that I was
rejected, or any of a dozen other things.

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/30/2010 07:32 PM, NightStrike wrote:
>> In consultation with other overseers, I rejected your request.  I did
>> not ask for a "real-looking-but-just-as-fake name", but a "real name".
>> You falsely presume zero vetting.
>>     
> You missed my point, then.  What's in a name?  How would you know if
> what I told you was true or not?
>   
How many liars do you think are actively contributing to GCC? Just a
guess...

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Paolo Carlini <paolo.carlini@oracle.com> wrote:
> On 06/30/2010 07:32 PM, NightStrike wrote:
>>> In consultation with other overseers, I rejected your request.  I did
>>> not ask for a "real-looking-but-just-as-fake name", but a "real name".
>>> You falsely presume zero vetting.
>>>
>> You missed my point, then.  What's in a name?  How would you know if
>> what I told you was true or not?
>>
> How many liars do you think are actively contributing to GCC? Just a
> guess...
>
> Paolo.
>

No idea.  I've been emailed offlist by 3 people that used fake names.
Or at least claimed to.

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

On 06/30/2010 07:44 PM, NightStrike wrote:
> No idea.  I've been emailed offlist by 3 people that used fake names.
> Or at least claimed to.
>   
Personally, I have trouble believing that (unless we have independent
evidence that they also sleep with a 44 Magnum under the napkin).

In any case, personally I don't really mind which nickname people use in
most of the day by day correspondence on the mailing lists, but I find
entirely sensible for FSF to have on file genuine data about the
contributors. Like any other profit or non-profit organization, as far
as I know.

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Carlini]

I meant pillow of course ;) ;)

Paolo.

Re: Patch pinging

[David Edelsohn]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:32 PM, NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:13 PM, Frank Ch. Eigler <fche@redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>> NightStrike <nightstrike@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> [...]
>>>> So who actually said no?
>>>
>>> The Frederic guy didn't like my fake-looking fake name, and wanted a
>>> real-looking-but-just-as-fake name, or he wouldn't create a account
>>> for me.
>>
>> In consultation with other overseers, I rejected your request.  I did
>> not ask for a "real-looking-but-just-as-fake name", but a "real name".
>> You falsely presume zero vetting.
>
> You missed my point, then.  What's in a name?  How would you know if
> what I told you was true or not?

He understood your point very well.  That is why Frank said, "You
falsely presume zero vetting."

Do you realize that your email message convey a very smug tone?

- David

Re: Patch pinging

[NightStrike]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 3:24 PM, David Edelsohn <dje.gcc@gmail.com> wrote:
> He understood your point very well.  That is why Frank said, "You
> falsely presume zero vetting."

Maybe I didn't get the zero vetting part, then.  I thought I did, but
apparently not.  What does that mean in this context?  Google isn't
telling me.

> Do you realize that your email message convey a very smug tone?

No, I do not realize that.  I was intending to speak matter-of-fact-ly.

Re: Patch pinging

[Mark Mitchell]

Ian Lance Taylor wrote:

> Thanks for the info.  So there is now a provenance, which is the point:
> there is a more-or-less real person associated with each contribution.
> I certainly would like the FSF to move to a similar model.

I agree.

I do understand the rationale for the FSF's desire to hold copyright,
and have a paper trail.  But, at this point, I think that's making it
harder to people to participate, and with no real benefit.  The FSF is
clinging to an outmoded policy due to a single occurrence from long ago.
 However, I believe that there is nothing we can do about that; I don't
imagine that this is something on which RMS or the SFLC would likely move.

I think that means that our only pragmatic choice is whether to be an
FSF project or not.  If we don't want that, then, of course, we could
adopt the Linux kernel's rules on contribution instead.  (We'd also give
up any ability to relicense code going forward (e.g., between GPL and
GFDL) since we'd likely have many copyright holders, and no practical
hope of getting them all to agree on any change.)  But, as long as we do
want to be an FSF project, we have to play by the FSF's rules.

-- 
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery
mark@codesourcery.com
(650) 331-3385 x713

Re: Patch pinging

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 06/30/2010 09:43 PM, NightStrike wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 3:24 PM, David Edelsohn<dje.gcc@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> He understood your point very well.  That is why Frank said, "You
>> falsely presume zero vetting."
>
> Maybe I didn't get the zero vetting part, then.  I thought I did, but
> apparently not.  What does that mean in this context?  Google isn't
> telling me.

It means that if you had said "John Doe" or "Jane Smith" Frank would 
have likely rejected your name as well.

Of course you could have given a plausible name or even a fake name that 
he would not recognize (e.g. in Italy "Mario Rossi" is frequently used 
this way), but at some point you have to trust the other person's good 
faith.

I don't know if anyone is using fake names in the FSF copyright list.  I 
think the FSF would be *very* upset if that was the case, and might go 
as far as vetting the contributions of the user and removing them.  If 
someone used a fake name when explicitly asked for a real name, why 
should I trust him to not violate copyright?

Paolo

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Kenner]

> I do understand the rationale for the FSF's desire to hold copyright,
> and have a paper trail.  But, at this point, I think that's making it
> harder to people to participate, and with no real benefit.  The FSF is
> clinging to an outmoded policy due to a single occurrence from long ago.

I disagree.  From what I see of the industry and its practices, I think the
risk of an attack on Free Software due to lack of providence issues is
INCREASING, not decreasing.  As FLOSS software makes more and more inroads
into the commercial world, proprietary software companies will feel more
and more threatened and the way most companies react to threats nowadays is
via legal attacks.  We've had companies (e.g., SCO) in the past who
transitioned from being software companies to legal firms.  It would not
surprise me at all if one or more compiler companies did something similar
in the next decade.

Re: Patch pinging

[Robert Dewar]

Richard Kenner wrote:
>> I do understand the rationale for the FSF's desire to hold copyright,
>> and have a paper trail.  But, at this point, I think that's making it
>> harder to people to participate, and with no real benefit.  The FSF is
>> clinging to an outmoded policy due to a single occurrence from long ago.
> 
> I disagree.  From what I see of the industry and its practices, I think the
> risk of an attack on Free Software due to lack of providence issues is
> INCREASING, not decreasing.  As FLOSS software makes more and more inroads
> into the commercial world, proprietary software companies will feel more
> and more threatened and the way most companies react to threats nowadays is
> via legal attacks.  We've had companies (e.g., SCO) in the past who
> transitioned from being software companies to legal firms.  It would not
> surprise me at all if one or more compiler companies did something similar
> in the next decade.

I fully agree with Richard on this point

Re: Patch pinging

[Richard Kenner]

> If someone used a fake name when explicitly asked for a real name,
> why should I trust him to not violate copyright?

I agree.  Remember that we're working mostly on trust here: the
indemnification isn't worth anything at all from an individual since they
don't have any assets to back it up.

Re: Patch pinging

[Jonathan Corbet]

On Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:57:59 EDT
kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu (Richard Kenner) wrote:

> I disagree.  From what I see of the industry and its practices, I think the
> risk of an attack on Free Software due to lack of providence issues is
> INCREASING, not decreasing.  As FLOSS software makes more and more inroads
> into the commercial world, proprietary software companies will feel more
> and more threatened and the way most companies react to threats nowadays is
> via legal attacks.  We've had companies (e.g., SCO) in the past who
> transitioned from being software companies to legal firms.  It would not
> surprise me at all if one or more compiler companies did something similar
> in the next decade.

The transition from software to lawyer companies seems inevitable.
It's been my feeling for a while, though, that, after SCO, anybody who
contemplates a copyright-based attack on free software will have to be
*very* sure of the ground they stand on.  I don't really expect to see
it, honestly.

As your failing compiler company lays off engineers and tops up its
legal staff, it will almost certainly find that picking up a software
patent or two in the process is an easy thing to do.  That's where
we're really exposed, and no amount of provenance metadata will really
help much in our defense.

jon