Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 1/2] xen/mm: fold PGC_broken into PGC_state bits

[David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>]

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On Thu, 2020-03-19 at 12:59 +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
> > Read that message again from the point of view of a contributor.
> > Pretend it isn't even me; pretend it's someone attempting to make
> > their first, trivial, improvement to the Xen ecosystem.
> > 
> > I hope you'll understand why my initial reaction was just a
> > monosyllabic 'no'.
> 
> To be honest- no, I don't. I didn't say "no way".

Then you have completely missed my point about how subtly understating
your 'objections' makes no difference at all to the outcome.

But OK, I'll come back to that at the end. You have made your intent
clear, more than once now, and we should take it on board.

>  Instead I asked back to see whether there's more background to this.
> It is a useful piece of information to know that -MP post-dates -MD
> by 10 or more years. It's still speculation of why a new option was
> added rather than making this default behavior, but I feel less
> afraid of the change this way than by an implied "this not going to
> do any harm" without really being certain why there is a separate
> option in the first place (and gcc doc also not saying anything to
> this effect).

It is not my job to make you feel less afraid of change.

> I can certainly follow your sentiment, not the least because
> especially in my early days I also frequently got back replies I
> didn't like, in various projects. Yet in a case like this one I'm
> afraid it is not the reviewer's job to point out the unsafety of
> a change, but it's the submitter who has to (sufficiently) prove
> that a change won't break anything. 

I'm sure you didn't mean it as such, Jan, but FYI that response could
be construed as being fairly patronising. If you were to direct it
towards someone who's even remotely inclined to feeling patronised,
that is. :)

> Yes, in the typical case, when there's a recognizable bug, the
> reviewer would point this out. But there are cases where there's no
> obvious bug, but experience (and, as so often, insufficient
> documentation) tells one to be wary of changes of, possibly, any
> kind.

I find this response to be purely obstructive and unhelpful. Your
response to my patch was basically asking me to prove a negative, and I
find myself surprised and disappointed that you cannot acknowledge
that. I didn't think our viewpoints were really that far apart; perhaps
I was wrong.

If there was an actual bug — or even the suspicion of a bug — I could
understand it. But this is just voodoo "we're too scared to change
things because we don't understand".

We are better than that. You can be better than that.

But I will take on board your comments about understatement and the
fact that you hadn't actually said "no". In future I shall consider
merely ignoring such interjections unless you explicitly state that you
are blocking the acceptance of a patch. Or, I suppose, resorting to the
style of monosyllabic answer that I had originally given in this case.

I trust that maintainers will take that on board too, and that open
"questions" from you in a thread will not be considered sufficient
reason not to merge a patch.

That seems to be what you're saying is your intent, yes? 


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