Re: [Caml-list] Trivial compiler patches

From: Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>
To: "Richard W.M. Jones" <rich@annexia.org>
Cc: Jacques Garrigue <garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp>,
	OCaML List Mailing <caml-list@inria.fr>
Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Trivial compiler patches
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 09:28:29 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAPFanBFJ4uxZVDvevTbGFpLduG6nJmMxU=XsaKZjSzCoiF6y7A@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20140322071508.GB10374@annexia.org>

I just created a Mantis issue for the patch:
  http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=6351

The workflow is the following:
  - login; your password should be (random-generated and) recorded in
your browser, two clicks
  - click "report issue", fill relevant info, upload patch, send

It's about two minutes. Alternatively you could have sent a
pull-request against github/ocaml/ocaml (as part of the ongoing "patch
review experiment" http://alan.petitepomme.net/cwn/2014.02.04.html#2
), but I think the workflow is not much quicker (though there are
command-line tools to make it faster).

I looked at the code and indeed the fix itself is trivial, but it was
still useful to make a review: the corresponding arm/emit.mlp change
had additional primitive-registering stuff, and I wondered whether
that also needed to be done in arm64/emit.mlp (answer: no, that is the
only necessary change).

On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 8:15 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rich@annexia.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 22, 2014 at 09:46:53AM +0900, Jacques Garrigue wrote:
>> On 2014/03/22 07:28, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> >
>> > What's a good place to send trivial compiler patches?  I don't want to
>> > open a new bug for what is essentially a one-line aarch64 fix.
>>
>> You should. It would save you the time spent asking this question :-)
>> More seriously, in theory all bug fixes should be tracked, even trivial
>> ones, since it lets others know where they were fixed (and where not).
>
> Let me tell you how ordinary open source projects operate.
>
> (1) They use git.  No one uses svn.
>
> (2) There is usually a mailing list where patches are posted,
> discussed and refined.  For example:
>
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2014-03/threads.html
>
> (3) There may be another path for trivial fixes to get into the
> project, eg. for typos, obvious build fixes, whitespace changes and so
> on.  In qemu this is:
>
> http://wiki.qemu.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches
> https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-trivial
>
> This encourages people not to give up on simple fixes because of
> excessive process.
>
> (4) They use a decent bug tracking system (ie. not Mantis).
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones
> Red Hat
>
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