[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Documentation, Usability and Development

[Petr Baudis <pasky@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > >    I sent in some huge patches, but several people complained about it,
> > > saying that I had actually written code^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
> > > not thought out the design enough and their whiz-bang paper tiger was
> > > better.  Since then I've heard nothing about it.
> > Huge patches are bad idea, approval chance near zero, IMHO.
> 
> Yeah, but *WHY*?
Because it is hard to review those patches. And if something will go wrong,
and the patch will need to be reverted, it will get reverted as a whole, not
only a part. Higher count of smaller patches are always better definitively.

>                   A patch should be disapproved only if it breaks something
> in a very fundamental way.
This way you can't easily check if it breaks something or not.

>                             Otherwise it should experimentally be included
> and the bugs worked out if possible.  The CVS maintainers can create a
> special branch for it if that would make it easier to deal with.
Obviously, if it's reasonable. Huge patch is not (see above).

> Inclusion, not rejection, should be the default case.  There should always be
> very good reason to reject a patch.  Stuff like formatting, naming
> conventions, etc. shouldn't be sufficient for rejection, because that's stuff
> that can be fixed by the people who really care about such things.
<flamebait>
Who was talking about naming conventions or formatting here..? :-)
</flamebait>

-- 

                                Petr "Pasky" Baudis

UN*X programmer, UN*X administrator, hobbies = IPv6, IRC, FreeCiv hacking
.
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