IRC.

1 files changed, 79 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/hurd/debugging/rpctrace.mdwn b/hurd/debugging/rpctrace.mdwn
index fd24f081..df6290f7 100644
--- a/hurd/debugging/rpctrace.mdwn
+++ b/hurd/debugging/rpctrace.mdwn
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 Free Software
+[[!meta copyright="Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Free Software
 Foundation, Inc."]]
 
 [[!meta license="""[[!toggle id="license" text="GFDL 1.2+"]][[!toggleable
@@ -89,6 +89,84 @@ See `rpctrace --help` about how to use it.
         <pinotree> braunr: the output of rpctrace --help should tell the
           default dir for msgids
 
+* IRC, freenode, #hurd, 2012-06-30
+
+        <mcsim> hello. Has anyone faced with problem when translator works
+          fine, but when it is started via rpctrace it hangs? Probably you know
+          what can cause this?
+        <antrik> mcsim: rpctrace itself is quite buggy
+        <antrik> zhengda once did a number of improvements, but they never went
+          upstream...
+        <youpi> well, he never explained how his fixes worked :)
+        <youpi> GNU/Hurd is no different from other projects in that regard: if
+          you don't explain how your patches work, there's low chance that they
+          are applied
+        <youpi> unless the maintainer has time to dive himself, which we don't
+        <pinotree> "it compiles, ship it!"
+        <braunr> pinotree: i guess the hurd is different in that particular
+          regard :p
+        <youpi> not different from linux
+        <braunr> eh, they include staging drivers now :)
+        <youpi> we have a sort-of staging tree as well, with netdde
+        <youpi> we don't really care about stability there
+        <antrik> youpi: actually, I think by now (and not to a small part
+          because of this episode) that we are too strict about patch
+          submission
+        <youpi> well, review really is needed, otherwise source gets into a bad
+          shape
+        <antrik> while zhengda's variant might not have been ideal (nobody of
+          us understands the workings of rpctrace enough to tell), I have
+          little doubt that it would be an improvement...
+        <youpi> it happened quite a few times that a fix revealed to be
+          actually bogus
+        <youpi> in that particular case, I agree
+        <youpi> the problem is that usually what happens is that questions are
+          asked
+        <youpi> and the answers never happen
+        <youpi> and thus the patch gets lost
+        <antrik> after all, when he when he submitted that patch, he had a much
+          better understanding of rpctrace than any of us...
+        <youpi> sure
+        <antrik> Linus is actually quite pragmatic about that. from what I've
+          seen, if he can be convinced that something is *probably* an
+          improvement over the previous status, he will usually merge it, even
+          if he has some qualms
+        <youpi> when there is a maintainer, he usually requires his approval,
+          doesn't he?
+        <antrik> in particular, for code that is new or has been in a very bad
+          shape before, standards shouldn't be as high as for changes to known
+          good code. and quite frankly, large parts of the Hurd code base
+          aren't all that good to begin with...
+        <youpi> sure
+        <antrik> well, sure. in this case, we should have just appointed
+          zhengda to be the rpctrace maintainer :-)
+        <antrik> BTW, as his version is quite fundamentally different, perhaps
+          instead of merging the very large patch, perhaps we should just ship
+          both versions, and perhaps drop the old one at some point if the new
+          one turns out to work well...
+        <antrik> (and perhaps I overused the word perhaps in that sentence
+          perhaps ;-) )
+        <youpi> about that particular patch, you had needed raised a few bits
+        <youpi> and there was no answers
+        <youpi> the patch is still in my mbox, far away
+        <youpi> so it was *not* technically lost
+        <youpi> it's just that as usual we lack manpower
+        <antrik> yeah, I know. but many of the things I raised were mostly
+          formalisms, which might be helpful for maintaining high-quality code,
+          but probably were just a waste of time and effort in this case... I'm
+          not surprised that zhengda lost motivation to pursue this further :-(
+        <braunr> it would help a lot to get the ton of patches in the debian
+          packages upstream :)
+        <youpi> braunr: there  aren't many, and usually for a good reason
+        <youpi> some of them are in debian for testing, and can probably be
+          commited at some point
+        <pinotree> youpi: we could mark (with dep3 headers) the ones which are
+          meant to be debian-specific
+        <youpi> sure
+        <antrik> well, there are also a few patches that are not exactly
+          Debian-specific, but not ready for upstream either...
+        <youpi> antrik: yes
+
 
 # See Also