Re: To Steering Committee: RFC for patch revert policy (PR48403, bootstrap broken on many targets)

[Steven Bosscher <stevenb dot gcc at gmail dot com>]

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:14 AM, Bernd Schmidt <bernds@codesourcery.com> wrote:

> For i686-linux bootstraps it's hard to argue against it, but in general
> I find it easier to cope with the occasional broken tree than with
> getting patches reverted when you can't reproduce the failure.

Maybe you find that easier, but auto-testers do not. That's a point
you completely ignore. And other people than you also do not find that
easier.

There are auto-testers for performance and regression hunting and they
simply stop working if bootstrap breaks. Also, scripts to bisect to a
regression have a higher risk of running into a broken tree if
bootstrap is broken over a longer period of time. That's an effect
that may be felt for months/years. There were ~80 checkins on the
trunk since r171843, most of them non-trivial. If one of those
introduced a regression it is now more difficult to automatically
identify which patch introduced it.

I don't understand, really, why it's such a big deal to revert a patch
quickly if it broke something. Yes, it should be done with care. But
not depending on weekends and holidays. For some people the weekend is
the only time they can work on GCC (hi!) and autotesters don't care if
it's weekend or not :-) You feel mobbed and I'm sorry you feel that
way, but it shows that a lot of people tried to work on GCC in that
weekend.

Ciao!
Steven