ports/104271: devel/kdbg: fails to open core file

[Ade Lovett]

On Feb 07, 2007, at 00:42 , Andriy Gapon wrote:
> sorry if I will sound a little bit harsh, but don't you think that you
> are being a little bit overzealous at closing PRs in this case ?

Well, if we look at the full audit trail, the issue has been floating  
around since 11/21/2006, there was an initial flurry of updates,  
followed by something approaching deathly silence.

> What kind of feedback did you expect ? Is a problem for which there  
> are
> no patches [yet] not a problem anymore ? Doesn't mere existence of a
> real and acknowledged problem warrant an open PR ?

I can't speak for Pav (well, I could, but he'd probably insist on  
resolving the issue with a drinking contest or something, and I'm not  
sure my liver is up to it ;) but the sort of feedback I'd be looking  
for is a patch that fixes the problem.

> Why did you take responsibility over this PR in the first place if you
> weren't going to submit your patches or help in anyway for this  
> problem
> to be [really] resolved ?

I think you misunderstand the concept of PR responsibility.  We have  
a non-trivial number of PRs in our database, and part of our  
thankless lives is to shepherd things through so that the database  
does not become bloated with reports that, for whatever reason, have  
stalled.  This situation helps no-one, since it becomes that much  
harder to identify 'useful' PRs (well written, preferably with patch,  
etc.) to be committed in a timely manner.

> I can confirm that the problem still exists and I insist that this  
> PR be
> re-opened. Only if for avoiding duplicate PRs and increasing a chance
> that somebody (not necessarily the maintainer or me) will look into  
> this.

The ideal situation would be for SomeOne[tm] to produce a patch.   
Since you are observing this behavior, and seem to have a reasonable  
handle on the problem, perhaps you could consider (a) talking to the  
current maintainer about taking over maintainership of the port and  
(b) providing a solution that fixes the problem.  Having a PR stuck  
in never-never-land (such as this one), really doesn't help anybody.

> Apologies again for being emotional, but that's how I feel about this
> kind of attitude towards PRs.

I wouldn't say your response is overly emotional, I'd consider it to  
be a well-reasoned point of view.  That said, leaving PRs around for  
eternity without actual proposed fixes in them simply doesn't scale.   
We've been down that road before, and as a result, have a number of  
well-defined policies when it comes to handling PRs.

I'd suggest the best way forward at this point is to develop some  
kind of fix, even if it's a hack of truly disgusting proportions.  As  
long as it doesn't break the port any more than it's broken right  
now, chances are it'll get committed in a timely manner.  A good  
first step towards this goal would be for you to consider taking over  
maintainership of the port in question, since it appears that for  
health reasons, the current maintainer is unable to devote resources  
at this moment in time.  The burden of responsibility on fixing ports  
falls on the maintainer, and not the hapless committer than spends a  
reasonable amount of their time shepherding PRs through the system.

-aDe