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Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)
- From: Eric Botcazou <ebotcazou at adacore dot com>
- To: Joel Sherrill <joel dot sherrill at oarcorp dot com>
- Cc: gcc at gcc dot gnu dot org, Andi Hellmund <mail at andihellmund dot com>, Richard Guenther <richard dot guenther at gmail dot com>, Steven Bosscher <stevenb dot gcc at gmail dot com>, "Manuel López-Ibáñez" <lopezibanez at gmail dot com>, Thomas Neumann <tneumann at users dot sourceforge dot net>
- Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 14:40:31 +0200
- Subject: Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)
- References: <v2x6c33472e1004231139xa8303e5cj45c8bc501e322d0b@mail.gmail.com> <4BD36245.30501@andihellmund.com> <4BD36544.6090702@oarcorp.com>
> So we need more patch reviewers. How can that be addressed?
The situation has improved in this area since the "Reviewer" position was
introduced a few years ago though.
> It is also important to make more effective use of the patch
> reviewers we already have. What could be done to make the
> patch review process easier or less time-consuming?
Write small patches. Even if you know that the change is not a complete
solution to the problem, it might be good enough as a first try so adding
a ??? comment would be sufficient.
Eliminate the easy mistakes in patches. GCC uses strict coding conventions,
including formatting and commenting conventions, so not following them is a
mistake that will be flagged as such. Fortunately this is easy to correct,
you don't even need to read the (whole) documentation, just look around in
the existing code you're modifying and make it so that the new code cannot
be distinguished from the old one in this respect.
Write proper ChangeLogs. They are kind of executive summaries for patches and
help to grasp what they do. The various ChangeLog files have many examples.
--
Eric Botcazou