From sources-request at octave dot org Thu Jun 17 10:36:30 2004
Subject: Re: Patch for documentation
From: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>
To: David Bateman <David dot Bateman at motorola dot com>
Cc: "John W. Eaton" <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu>,         Federico Zenith <zenith@chemeng.ntnu.no>, sources@octave.org
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 10:34:32 -0500

On 17-Jun-2004, David Bateman <David dot Bateman at motorola dot com> wrote:

| According to John W. Eaton <jwe at bevo dot che dot wisc dot edu> (on 06/17/04):
| > Can you please split up your patch into smaller pieces, each of which
| > addresses a particular problem?  Otherwise, I'm likely to ignore it
| > since it is large and I have limited time at the moment to try to
| > extract the parts that we might want to keep.  If each patch is
| > smaller and solves just one problem, then it will be much easier to
| > evalute.  Please post the smaller patches to the bugs list.  The
| > sources list is for new code contributions, not patches.
| > 
| > For any changes to code, please include ChangeLog entries.
| > 
| > Thanks,
| 
| I think you're taking the wrong approach here. Here is someone who
| has basically stepped forward to update the documentation to the
| way octave currently is rather than how it was 2 or 3 years ago.
| You have the oppurtunity here to assign the responsibility for the
| documentation task to Fredrico, as long as he is willing to take it
| on, save your-self heaps of effort that you can assign elsewhere and
| get to a version 3.0 release that much faster.
| 
| Telling Fredrico to cut his patch up into little pieces, and maybe
| they'll be accepted is basically just a turn-off for him. The only
| exception I see to this is the part where he actually modifies the
| code.
| 
| I've done a quick read over his patch (but haven't compiled with
| it) and can't see any issues easily. So please accept this 
| opportunity to reduce your workload by trusting someone to get it
| right, especially since it is in the documentation where there
| is minimum risk of affecting the functionality of octave.
| 
| Sorry, for the criticism, but if you read in detail all of the
| submitted patches, you might as well write them yourself.

OK, sorry I jumped in the negative direction here, but I'm under a lot
of time pressure recently for various reasons.

(Nearly) blindly accepting large patches is not something I'm willing
to do unless I have some sense that the person sending that patches
will still be around for a while, or has made a number of good changes
in the past.  The easiest way to get to that point is to send a series
of small patches over a period of time.

OTOH, if someone who has been doing a lot of good work over time (like
you or Paul Kienzle, for example) reviews a patch and says "this looks
good, you should probably apply it" then I'm more likely to do so,
even if the patch comes from someone I don't know as well.

jwe