Re: [Caml-list] OCaml maintenance status / community fork (again)

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

Xavier Leroy <Xavier.Leroy@inria.fr> writes:

> On 12/08/2011 10:10 AM, Benedikt Meurer wrote:
>> The relevant bug report PR/5404, which includes a backward
>> compatible patch, is already waiting for a sign of life for 3 weeks
>> now (maybe wait another 4 years to get the port fixed).
>
> More bile.  What's so urgent about it?  The next release of OCaml is 3-6
> months in the future; your suggestion will be examined by then.  You know,
> some people have busy professional lives. I can only devote 1 to 2 days per
> months to OCaml maintenance, and would prefer to spend them on technical
> work rather than on massaging egos or putting out the fires that you light
> up on this list.

I don't want to be aggressive or offensive and if it comes across as
that then please forgive me. No need to massage my ego also. I would
rather be told to piss off or that a patch will never be added because
it is stupid than have you play nice and have patches be left unatended
in mantis. Because how else will I ever learn?  That said ...


So maybe PR/5404 was a bad example. How about these?

[1] 1 month to acknowledge, 24 month silence since then
[2] 1 month to acknowledge, 24 month silence since then
[3] 11 month to acknowledge, 19 month silence since then
[4] 16 month to acknowledge, 18 month silence since then
[5] 15 month to acknowledge, 6 month silence since then

[1] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4919
[2] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4909
[3] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4812
[4] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=4987
[5] http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=5005

All of these have patches (or just needs a function declaration copied to
the .h file). They don't need huge work consuming changes to the
compiler and they don't add anything fundamentally new to it. They just
improve/extend the existing stuff a little.

For those to lazy to follow the links here is one of the patches that
has been sitting there for 2 years now:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- ocaml-3.11.0.orig/otherlibs/unix/unixsupport.h
+++ ocaml-3.11.0/otherlibs/unix/unixsupport.h
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
 #define Nothing ((value) 0)
 
 extern value unix_error_of_code (int errcode);
+extern int code_of_unix_error (value error);
 extern void unix_error (int errcode, char * cmdname, value arg) Noreturn;
 extern void uerror (char * cmdname, value arg) Noreturn;
 
--- ocaml-3.11.0.orig/otherlibs/unix/unixsupport.c
+++ ocaml-3.11.0/otherlibs/unix/unixsupport.c
@@ -263,6 +263,15 @@
   return err;
 }
 
+extern int code_of_unix_error (value error)
+{
+  if (Is_block(error)) {
+    return Int_val(Field(error, 0));
+  } else {
+    return error_table[Int_val(error)];
+  }
+}
+
 void unix_error(int errcode, char *cmdname, value cmdarg)
 {
   value res;
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Adding this does not take a week of your summer vacation but still it
gets ignored.

Sure it is more fun to write code for first-class modules and the core
team has done a great job there. On the other hand trvial things are not
being done and that is verry frustrating to the submitter. Frankly I've
given up writing patches for ocaml because what is the point. They are
not getting looked at. Through things like that you are loosing a
workforce that could contribute at lot.


On the other hand if the model of glibc / eglibc for example where used
for ocaml the frustration would be reduced, the patches would get
audited by others in the community and added to the one community "fork"
before reaching the core team. You would get less patches, patches that
are better tested and cleaner. "Bad" patches would get filtered out
before they reach you.

This is not a condemnation of you or the core team. It is probably not
even something you can do anything about no matter how hard you try. It
is probably just a matter of scale. As a project growes at some point
there just seem to be a point where a single central core doesn't work
anymore. Things pile up, things fall through the cracks, priotization
leaves things starving. There plain aren't enough hours in the day to
cover every single bug or reply to every mail on the mainlinglist.

So let the community help and offload some work on them, like vetting a
simple patch like the above, so that you have more time to concentrate on the
difficult things like arm support or fist class modules (which I love by
the way) or to take a deserved vacation.

MfG
        Goswin