Re: [tree-ssa] Merge status

[Mike Stump <mrs at apple dot com>]

On Wednesday, March 17, 2004, at 06:31 AM, law@redhat.com wrote:
> Assuming that's the case, I would _expect_ that these developers will 
> happily
> fix their code when the problems are pointed out.

I've had that experience to some degree, but also the opposite.  People 
that don't want to maintain code that just want it to compile, because 
it used to compile before.  They really hate it when it just _stops_ 
compiling.  The code is often not theirs, but rather comes from a 3rd 
party or they are doing porting (they are the 3rd party).  They just 
want it to compile.

Additionally, there is the case where you want to develop and test a 
new compiler against the entire OS build, but you can't because things 
don't compile, and therefore, you can't test, therefore you loose 
testing, which is bad.  The project owners are busy working on real 
development and don't always want to be bothered with the minor 
maintenance.  They'll get around to doing it, but they want to schedule 
it and do it at a different time.  The problem is, in the intervening 
timeframe you've lost all testing that could have been done.

Also, even if they were willing to do the changes, they want to do them 
in their top of tree, which, isn't the stable testing source you wanted 
to test, but rather the build of the day software of the next OS that 
may or may not work, which defeats the entire purpose of building and 
testing it.

These issues aren't new or surprising, but I thought I would point them 
out to balance your statement.