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Re: [RFC]: designing customizable format attributes
On Sat, 9 Jul 2005, Kaveh R. Ghazi wrote:
> It's only "elaborate" if you force it to be so. It's possible to
> design an extensible syntax that could be implemented incrementally
> like was done for sentinels. But airing the issues for a design is
> necessary now so that it can be implemented on time for stage1.
Attempting to design something extensible with datastructures in such a
premature state is just something I think would add to the long-term
maintenance burden here. The only incremental things I think can be done
as yet are the gradual improvement of the existing datastructures.
> If you don't want to help, fine. But don't tell me how to allocate my
> own time.
The fact is that any list discussion consumes the time of readers trying
to avoid problematic new designs being made or enshrined in code and takes
away time the readers could otherwise spend fixing bugs. A principle that
if design or code for new features is done during stage 3 then all
objections, comments, proposals for different designs, etc. made when the
code is submitted in stage 1 are to be considered just as timely as if
made during stage 3 might help, but I don't think it could fully solve the
problem of new development not merely being a personal choice but pushing
on the time of hundreds of others. There is a feedback problem here;
people expect (by history) a long stage 3, which encourages new
development to avoid a long break from such, which both directly reduces
the bug-fixing time available and so prolongs stage 3 but also consumes
time from everyone else keeping up with the new development thereby
further reducing the bugfixing and prolonging stage 3, thereby encouraging
more new development and design rather than biding one's time in the
interests of a short stage 3.
--
Joseph S. Myers http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jsm28/gcc/
jsm@polyomino.org.uk (personal mail)
joseph@codesourcery.com (CodeSourcery mail)
jsm28@gcc.gnu.org (Bugzilla assignments and CCs)