Douglas Pratley wrote:
I submitted two patches earlier this year:
...
Can anybody tell me their current status? That is:
To follow up what Doug has said, I have to say that I've found my recent
experiences in getting patches applied less than positive. Anders
applied quite a few, but there was one particular patch which I had to
ask _four_ times to be reviewed before anything happened. Whilst I
understand that everyone is busy, I'd like to give the developer's
perspective here and point out that it is incredibly frustrating to
spend a few days working on a new feature, polishing a patch and
submitting it, only to have it ignored. Nobody is suggesting that you
should apply patches without appropriate review - even a reply
explaining why the patch can't be reviewed right now would be something.
Ultimately you are only going to end up alienating your developer base,
which, particularly for a product like Wireshark with its millions of
dissectors, would be a disaster.
Might I suggest that what is needed is a change to the procedures for
patch submission, review, and application. It seems to me that the
current problem is that no individual committer has responsibility for
reviewing and applying patches - so they tend to get ignored in the hope
that somebody else will have more time. How about if you required
patches to be submitted to the Bugzilla, with the responsibility for
different parts of the system divided amongst the committers? Then at
least everybody could keep track of what's on the todo list, and patches
wouldn't get lost in the general noise of the mailing list as I fear
they currently do.
Anyway, it's not for me to tell you how to run your project, but I do
think it's only fair to point out that if the status quo continues, you
are going to end up with a lot of frustrated developers.
Regards,
Richard
