Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Michael Rothwell]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 7 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> >
> > Linus, can you post reasons why you keep ignoring^W rejecting the IrDA
> > patch?
> 
> Basically, whatever Alan rants, I've not seen the patches all that many
> times at all.
> 
> Also, I've never seen much in the form of explanation, and at least the
> last patch I saw just the first screenful was so off-putting that I just
> went "Ok, I have real bugs to fix, I don't need this crap".
> 
>                 Linus


Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
patch is never accepted -- could you clarify? They're apparently putting
a lot of effort into writing and fixing IrDA for Linux, and have become
very discouraged at the lack of feedback. "Crap" the code may be, but it
seems like it would be a good idea to at least say something substantive
about why their code keeps getting rejected.
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > Also, I've never seen much in the form of explanation, and at least the
> > last patch I saw just the first screenful was so off-putting that I just
> > went "Ok, I have real bugs to fix, I don't need this crap".
>
> Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?

There's one _major_ reason why things never get accepted:

 CVS trees

I'm not fed patches. I'm force-fed big changes every once in a while. I
don't like it.

I like it even less when the very first screen of a patch is basically a
stupid change that implies that somebody calls ioctl's from interrupts.

When I get a big patch like that, where the very first screen is
bletcherous, what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm not going to waste my
time on people who cannot send multiple small and well-defined patches,
and who send be big, ugly, "non-maintained" (as far as I'm concerned)
patches.

I'm surprised Alan rants about this. He knows VERY well how I work, and is
(along with Jeff Garzik and Randy Dunlap) one of the people who are very
good at sending me 25 separate patches with explanations of what they do.

Basically, if you send me a big patch with tons of changes, how the hell
DO you expect me to answer them? Does anybodt really expect me to go
through ten thousand lines of code that I do not know, and comment on it?
Obviously not, as anybody with an ounce of sense would see.

So what choice do I have? Apply them blindly?

Quite frankly, I'd rather have a few people hate me deeply than apply
stuff I don't like. If I just start blindly applying big patches, I can
avoid nasty discussions. But I'd rather have people flame me. Maybe some
day people will instead start sending me smaller commented patches.

I'm NOT going to do other peoples work for them. If people can't be
bothered to send me well-specified patches ESPECIALLY now that we're close
to 2.4.x, then I can't be bothered to apply them,

Live with it. Hat eme all you like. I do not care. Th ething I care about
is not letting too much crap through unchecked.

		Linus

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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (+ more flames)

[Jean Tourrilhes]

On Thu, Nov 09, 2000 at 07:24:04PM -0800, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> 
>         I spent my full day going through my archives and splitting
> the big patch of Dag into lots of small patches (see attached). I'm
> glad I've got a big hard drive full of junk.

	By the way, while I'm in flaming mode, could somebody tell ESR
that this patch split (as well as most of the patches themselves) was
sponsored by HP ? He should check his fact more carefully before
jumping on his guns, he seem one of the few who haven't visited the
Wireless LAN Howto...

	Now I can cool down...

	Jean
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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (was Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status)

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> 
> 	I spent my full day going through my archives and splitting
> the big patch of Dag into lots of small patches (see attached). I'm
> glad I've got a big hard drive full of junk.

When I say multiple mails, I mean multiple mails. NOT "26 attachements in
one mail". In fact, not a single attachment at all, please. Send me
patches as a regular text body, with the explanation at the top, and the
patch just appended.

Why?

Attachements may look simple, but they are not. I end up having to open
each and every one of them individually, remembering which one I've
checked, save them off individually, remembering what the file name was,
and then apply them each individually.

See the picture? Attachements are evil. 

In contrast, imagine that you (and everybody else) sends me plain-text
patches, with just an explanation on top. What do I do?

I see the explanation immediately when I open the mail (ie when I press
the "n" key for "next email").

I can save it off with a simple "s../doit", which saves it in _one_ "doit"
file appended to all the other pending stuff. Alternatively, I can skip
it, or leave it pending, and let the _mail_software_ remember whether I
answered that particular patch.

I can reply to it individually, and that patch (and nothing else) will be
automatically set up for the reply so that I can easily quote whatever
parts I want to point out.

I can apply all the patches that I have approved with a single

	patch -p1 < ~/doit

without having to go through them individually.

None of the above works with attachments. 

> > Basically, if you send me a big patch with tons of changes, how the hell
> > DO you expect me to answer them? Does anybodt really expect me to go
> > through ten thousand lines of code that I do not know, and comment on it?
> > Obviously not, as anybody with an ounce of sense would see.
> 
> 	If somebody send you 1000 lines in one go or as 100 times 10
> lines, it doesn't matter, it is still 1000 lines of code to read
> through. Even small patches can be totally obscure for somebody not
> familiar with the code and what it is supposed to do.

You are WRONG.

10 emails with 1000-line patches are _much_ easier to handle. I can
clearly see the parts that belong together (nothing is mixed up with other
issues), and I can keep the explanation in mind. I do not have to remind
myself what that particular piece is doing.

It has other advantages too. With a single 10000-line patch, if I don't
like something, I have a hard time just removing THAT part. So I have to
reject the whole f*cking patch, and the person who sent it to me has to
fix up the whole thing (assuming I'd bother answering to it, poitning out
the parts that I don't like from the large patch, which I will not).

With 10 1000-line emails, I can decide to apply 8 of them outright, apply
one with comments, and discard one that does something particularly
nauseating. And I can much more easily explain to the submitter which one
I hate, without having to edit it down.

See?

		Linus

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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (was Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status)

[Jean Tourrilhes]

On Fri, Nov 10, 2000 at 11:56:57AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> When I say multiple mails, I mean multiple mails. NOT "26 attachements in
> one mail". In fact, not a single attachment at all, please. Send me
> patches as a regular text body, with the explanation at the top, and the
> patch just appended.

	No problem, they are going to come this way. Your mailbox
should be full by tonight.
	Please remember that they are *incremental*, skipping some of
them may work, skipping others may fail. I can't do much about that
because this is the way things are developped (patch of a patch).

> I can reply to it individually, and that patch (and nothing else) will be
> automatically set up for the reply so that I can easily quote whatever
> parts I want to point out.

	Good. I didn't know this featured existed ;-)

> You are WRONG.
> 
> 10 emails with 1000-line patches are _much_ easier to handle. I can
> clearly see the parts that belong together (nothing is mixed up with other
> issues), and I can keep the explanation in mind. I do not have to remind
> myself what that particular piece is doing.
> 
> It has other advantages too. With a single 10000-line patch, if I don't
> like something, I have a hard time just removing THAT part. So I have to
> reject the whole f*cking patch, and the person who sent it to me has to
> fix up the whole thing (assuming I'd bother answering to it, poitning out
> the parts that I don't like from the large patch, which I will not).
> 
> With 10 1000-line emails, I can decide to apply 8 of them outright, apply
> one with comments, and discard one that does something particularly
> nauseating. And I can much more easily explain to the submitter which one
> I hate, without having to edit it down.

	Yes, you are right, and I realised it looking back to some of
the patches. But this needs to be balanced against the cost of context
switches, especially for IrDA code.

> See?
> 
> 		Linus

	I hope you realise that I'm only acting as a facilitator and
doing the work of Dag, because I need to get IrDA in proper shape in
2.4 (because I need IrNET), and because most of the patches are mines
(see comments). So yes, I did flame, but it was only to get things
moving and remove the deadlock, so let's forget about the bad words...
	Dag will keep being the IrDA maintainer (I hope he will have
learned his lesson), and I hope you will finish the whole process with
Dag, because next week is a Wireless LAN week for me ;-) And I should
also look at BlueTooth PAN if ever I've got time :-(

	For the patches : I'll send them to you personally, there is
no need to abuse further the LKML (they have the attachement
version). They will be formated as described above. I hope my little
fingers won't do any mistakes ;-)

	Have fun, and thanks again for taking the time to sort out the
issues ;-)

	Jean
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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (was Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status)

[Linus Torvalds]

Ok, thanks to the work of Jean, everything seems to be applied now.

I'll make a test3 one of these days (probably tomorrow), please verify
that everything looks happy.

		Linus

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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (was Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status)

[Jean Tourrilhes]

On Sat, Nov 11, 2000 at 06:43:26PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> 
> Ok, thanks to the work of Jean, everything seems to be applied now.
> 
> I'll make a test3 one of these days (probably tomorrow), please verify
> that everything looks happy.
> 
> 		Linus

	Linus,

	Sorry to bother you again, but a important note...
	I sent you the whole serie of patches. Then Dag sent it to you
again today. The patches were the same *except* for #14. Dag did
replace the original #14 patch that you didn't like with a cleaner
version (using empty packet to trigger speed changes).
	I'm sorry for the confusion. But don't worry, we will adjust
for whatever you put in test3 and work from there, so please don't do
anything ;-) And yes, I'll put it to the usual tests...

	And thanks again for taking the time to go through the patches
so quickly. We do appreciate your great work ;-)

	Have fun ;-)

	Jean
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Re: The IrDA patches !!! (was Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status)

[Horst von Brand]

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> said:
> On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> > 
> > 	I spent my full day going through my archives and splitting
> > the big patch of Dag into lots of small patches (see attached). I'm
> > glad I've got a big hard drive full of junk.
> 
> When I say multiple mails, I mean multiple mails. NOT "26 attachements in
> one mail". In fact, not a single attachment at all, please. Send me
> patches as a regular text body, with the explanation at the top, and the
> patch just appended.
> 
> Why?
>
> [Nice explanation snipped]

How about placing this (slightly edited, and with some other stuff thrown
in perhaps?) in a SUBMITTING-PATCHES file in the top of the kernel sources,
so nobody can overlook it?
--
Horst von Brand                             vonbrand@sleipnir.valparaiso.cl
Casilla 9G, Vin~a del Mar, Chile                               +56 32 672616
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Linus Torvalds]

On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> 
> Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?

Just to clarify.

The ONLY message from the IrDA people I've gotten during the last few
weeks has been a SINGLE email from Dag Brattli, with a 330kB patch.

The whole, full, unabridged explanation for those 330kB of patches:

>> Hello Linus,
>> 
>> Here is the latest IrDA patch for Linux-2.4.0-test10. 
>> 
>> Short summary: 
>> 
>> o Fixes IrDA in 2.4
>> o Touches _no_ other files. 
>> 
>> Please apply! 
>> 
>> Best regards
>> 
>> Dag Brattli

That's it.

ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 

10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
anything but

	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"

and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
claim should have been applied? Nada.

Get a grip. 

		Linus

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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Russell King]

Linus Torvalds writes:
> ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
> have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 
> 
> 10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
> anything but
> 
> 	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"
> 
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.
> 
> Get a grip. 

Linus,

You know full well that I have sent you *small* self-contained obviously
correct patches since 2.4.0-test2 onwards.  Why haven't these been applied
when the only argument against it is "ONE huge patch"?
   _____
  |_____| ------------------------------------------------- ---+---+-
  |   |         Russell King        rmk@arm.linux.org.uk      --- ---
  | | | | http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html   /  /  |
  | +-+-+                                                     --- -+-
  /   |               THE developer of ARM Linux              |+| /|\
 /  | | |                                                     ---  |
    +-+-+ -------------------------------------------------  /\\\  |
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status, Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Dag Brattli]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3611 bytes --]

Hi Linus,

I agree that the latest patch wasn't good about specifying its contents. 
But in fact, the 26th of august I sent you a mail which was much better
(but then your mailbox crashed or something!?) Since you hadn't applied 
any previoius patches (and not even the  patches from Russell), I felt that you
wasn't to interested about IrDA (even if Transmeta is a member of IrDA these 
days ;-) or didn't have time to look thru them. So that's the reason for the 
very short description. I'm sorry about that!

I've watched the ISDN discussion a year ago, so I already knew what you
felt about such large patches. The truth is that I've been very busy with my 
new job, and haven't had much time to maintain the Linux-IrDA project, so 
those large patches was the best I could do, and it's correct that I haven't  
actually flooded you with patches the last 6 months.

But we should anyway discuss what to do with IrDA support in Linux 2.4. 
The state of the current IrDA code in 2.4 is very bad and probably not 
working at all. The latest patch may have some bad code as well but at 
least things are working (and Linux isn't the OS which is best known for it's
beautiful code anyway). It will eventually be fixed, once people start 
complaining!

Some options:

1) Split up the large patch and fix the things you didn't like, submit them
with better discription. But then It's probably to late anyway for 2.4 (even if 
the 2.4-test series is not the most stable stuff I've tried). Is it to late for this?

2) Remove IrDA from the kernel, and we'll go back to using CVS and 
make our own package (like PCMCIA and IrDA was before they got 
into the kernel. At least PCMCIA used to work back then ;-)

3) Just apply the stuff!?! Look at Jean's mail for description of the changes.

-- Dag

On Tue, 7 Nov 2000 23:26:34 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
> 
> 
> On Wed, 8 Nov 2000, Michael Rothwell wrote:
> > 
> > Like what? I'm not sure what you're saying here. It seems that the pople
> > writing the IrDA code have gotten no feedback from you as to why their
> > patch is never accepted -- could you clarify?
> 
> Just to clarify.
> 
> The ONLY message from the IrDA people I've gotten during the last few
> weeks has been a SINGLE email from Dag Brattli, with a 330kB patch.
> 
> The whole, full, unabridged explanation for those 330kB of patches:
> 
> >> Hello Linus,
> >> 
> >> Here is the latest IrDA patch for Linux-2.4.0-test10. 
> >> 
> >> Short summary: 
> >> 
> >> o Fixes IrDA in 2.4
> >> o Touches _no_ other files. 
> >> 
> >> Please apply! 
> >> 
> >> Best regards
> >> 
> >> Dag Brattli
> 
> That's it.
> 
> ONE message during the last month. ONE huge patch. From people who should
> have known about 2.4.x being pending for some time. 
> 
> 10,000+ lines of diff, with _no_ effort to split it up, or explain it with
> anything but
> 
> 	"o Fixes IrDA in 2.4"
> 
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.
> 
> Get a grip. 
> 
> 		Linus
> 
> 
> 
----
Dag Brattli,                       Mail:  dagb@fast.no
Senior Systems Engineer            Web:   http://www.fast.no/
Fast Search & Transfer ASA         Phone: +47 776 96 688
P.O. Box 1126                      Fax:   +47 776 96 689
NO-9261 Tromsø, NORWAY             Cell:  +47 924 05 388

Try FAST Search: http://www.alltheweb.com/

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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> Some options:
> 
> 1) Split up the large patch and fix the things you didn't like, submit them
> with better discription. But then It's probably to late anyway for 2.4 (even if 
> the 2.4-test series is not the most stable stuff I've tried). Is it
> to late for this?

Probably not. Get tytso to agree that broken IrDA is critical bug,
split patches, and see them accepted.

> 2) Remove IrDA from the kernel, and we'll go back to using CVS and 
> make our own package (like PCMCIA and IrDA was before they got 
> into the kernel. At least PCMCIA used to work back then ;-)

Do not do that, please.

> 3) Just apply the stuff!?! Look at Jean's mail for description of
> the changes.
								Pavel

-- 
I'm pavel@ucw.cz. "In my country we have almost anarchy and I don't care."
Panos Katsaloulis describing me w.r.t. patents at discuss@linmodems.org
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Re: [RANT] Linux-IrDA status

[Michael Rothwell]

Linus Torvalds wrote:
> and these people expect me to reply, sending long explanations of why I
> don't like them? After they did nothing of the sort for the code they
> claim should have been applied? Nada.

Did you say that to them? I'm not saying you're wrong; but did you tell
them that? It might make your life easier if you make a faq on "how to
get your code accepted" and another on "how to get your code rejected."
Then you could send people off to read those, and maybe even site a
"violates #6" or whatever.

> Get a grip.

Help a little.

-M
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