Re: Gnus work

[Eric Abrahamsen <eric@ericabrahamsen.net>]

Emanuel Berg <moasen@zoho.com> writes:

> Eric Abrahamsen wrote:
>
>> I've been very slowly reading the Gnus code
>> base, and looking at how to go about doing
>> some refactoring, cleanups, and a few
>> new features.
>
> What strikes me immediately when I read the
> Gnus source is that the defuns are often very,
> very long. But I'm not suggesting anyone do
> something about it for that reason alone.
> However if anyone does work on a defun and has
> thus acquired a close to complete understanding
> of it, it could be considered breaking it up,
> possibly repeatedly, as the last step of work,
> and then along lines that are as natural
> as possible, of course.

I think the main problem is not so much that the defuns are long, but
that they do too much, there's overlap, and there's lots of
work-by-side-effect. A long defun wouldn't be so bad if you could scan
it and feel confident that you knew what it was doing.

What I *do* think is a problem is that variables and functions are named
inconsistently, and often confusingly. It just makes debugging that much
harder. But on the other hand, renaming just for renaming's sake...