Re: Creating gcc-newbies mailing list

[Tim Prince <n8tm at aol dot com>]

lopezibanez@gmail.com wrote:
> Since I have been around no more than one year, perhaps my perspective
> could have some interest for the discussion.

> Just an example. There are people that post patches in bugzilla and
> they seem interested in getting them integrated but normally they
> break coding style or don't have changelog or didn't even run the
> testsuite. Of course, the easiest answer is to point to the "how to
> contribute" webpage. I have done it too. But I must admit that it is a
> poor answer. When I started, I couldn't bring myself to read all that
> was required to post a proper patch. Fortunately for me, Ian had a lot
> of patience to mentor me and some folks were so kind to teach me how
> to submit a proper patch. However, I don't think that is the typical
> situation.
No, it isn't.  I have been around long enough to know that it frequently 
takes several years for a patch posted on bugzilla to be evaluated.  Of 
course, it is stale long before then, and has to be reformulated anyway 
to make it work.  So, there doesn't seem much point in an infrequent 
contributor posting a ready-to-go patch.  Often, there are several ways 
to fix a problem, and it's not at all clear which if any would be accepted.