Re: [Caml-list] About contributions to the Standard Library

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 09:21:11AM -0400, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> Well there are more tickets on the bugtracker (and github PRs) than human
> time to review and make decisions on all of them. I'm very sorry if some
> contributions are left to bitrot. Anyone can help by reviewing and giving
> informed opinions on suggestions, and it's most helpful if contributors are
> ready to ping from time to time to ask for an opinion on their contribution.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 7:19 AM, Gerd Stolpmann <info@gerd-stolpmann.de>
> wrote:
> 
> > Am Montag, den 27.06.2016, 11:09 +0200 schrieb Goswin von Brederlow:
> > > Why should we contribute when contibutions are just left to bitrot?
> > >
> > > Like: http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4909 which has had a
> > > patch for 6 1/2 year that's just left rotting.
> >
> > I guess you hit one of the pain points of the current library design,
> > namely the various integer types (and the issue of combinatorial
> > increase of possible variants). In my most recent code (a data science
> > lib) I solved that radically - no support for 32 bit architectures
> > anymore. The truth is that with current OCaml you cannot support both 32
> > bit and 64 bit equally well. Either you get a performance loss from
> > boxed ints, or you get macros in central places of your code.
> >
> > Of course, that's no excuse for not responding at all.
> >
> > Gerd

But then you should ask for more workers, not for more work.

If you already can't keep up with the existing rate of contributions
then more contributions will only mean more are left to bitrot. Worse,
it means less contribution do get added because you spend more time
just checking new contributions and deciding to not handle them right
now.

But anyway, consider this a ping for my patch. Hopefully it will be
looked at again now.

MfG
	Goswin