[illumos-Discuss] multi-extent files

[Garrett D'Amore]

On Sun, 2010-10-24 at 23:02 +0200, Joerg Schilling wrote:
> Apostolos Syropoulos <asyropoulos at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > in Solaris supports multi-extent  files:
> >  
> >  http://www.archivum.info/opensolaris-bugs@opensolaris.org/2009-06/00042/%28osol-bugs%29-Question-about-Multi-extent-ISO9660-files.html
> >
> >  
> > When I reported this "bug" Jörg Schilling replied and he wrote in that forum
> > that he had prepared everything but SUN did not wanted this additional bits.
> > Is it possible that this enhancement will be included in Illumos?
> 

> 
> At the same time Garret claims to work on replacing closed source with new OSS 
> code. My impression is that this code gets to few testing compared to the 
> complexity of the features: I've even seen integrations for software with 
> known bugs and without the intention to fix these bugs in the near future.

Vague comments like this are not helpful.  If you're going to make such
accusations, please provide supporting evidence.  As far as I know, the
only situation that I've rejected a suggestion is where I disagree with
the evaluation that the behavior is a bug.  (This is the issue of
whether or not printf(1) should generate an error with -x options or
not.)

> 
> I explained to Garret that OSS in a community project only works in case that 
> people are treated equally and that doing code reviews for others is a mutual 
> courtesy. I did even have a 3:15 hour long phone call with him last wednesday 
> evening. In this call, I tried to explain which problems I see. At the end of 
> that phone call, I had the impression that Garret understood the problems.....
> A few hours later, he integrated his 80% ready od(1) replacement code although
> it still has several bugs or unacceptable deviations from the POSIX standard.

I doubt that you read what I integrated.  So far I've addressed all the
issues that have been made known to me.  Make others known to me and I
will happily fix them.  I am not going to hold back integrations (mine
or anyone else's) in response to review comments that don't provide
adequate information for a reviewer to understand the nature of problem.

I spent several more hours addressing the problems, testing all the
other edge cases I could think of, and then asking for additional code
review.

So far you have *refused* to provide substantive information in a way
that anyone can use it.

At the end of the day, this behavior is unhelpful.

> 
> I tried to warn that Garret's od(1) replacement is in obvious conflict to the 
> POSIX standard. Instead of asking for more help, it seems that Garret never 
> was interested in help and even claimed that he knows that my statements abut 
> his od(1) replacement are wrong.

I freely admit that once I eked out some explanation from you of the
issues, I did work to fix them.  I misunderstood your original
complaints because you never provided direct answers to *any* of my
questions for more detail.

> 
> BTW: I of course offered much more software for integration than just star,
> but star is the first integration project and I of course have no interest in
> spending my time in other projects that will not be integrated either.


Translation: you're holding the rest of your integrations hostage until
we integrate star.  Sorry, that's not going to work here -- its not
helpful behavior on your part, and frankly I don't want to work with
someone who's more interested in his particular agenda than in
contributing to the greater good.

>  Garret 
> also made it very clear that he is not interested in software from me as he is
> not willing to give my software an equal chance.

I personally have stated that I'm exhausted from dealing with you, and
that you should seek another advocate if you want to try an alternative
approach.  I am not the final word here, and I won't overturn another
advocate's decision to integrate your stuff.

Of course, the problem is that your project is overwhelming to review,
you have refused to concede certain points which would make it easier to
review, and it fails to achieve primary goals for the project.  So of
course its lower priority for me, and probably for other people too.

You started with an equal chance.  You longer have that from my part,
because you've shown yourself to be too troublesome and annoying to deal
with.

Whether you have an equal chance from the other advocates is for them to
say.

What you *do* have, again, thanks to my efforts, is an equal opportunity
to fork the code base and start your own project.  At this point, I
personally wish you would just do that.  If you have worthwhile
enhancements that are suitably licensed, we might even pull those
changes back into illumos-gate.

>  It seems that I have to give 
> up wasting my time in this area (Garret's od(1) replacement currently only
> implements 80% of the POSIX requirements correctly and I expect that at least 
> 60% of the work still has to be put into this implementation to make it 
> usable).

Again, claims with no substantiation.  I'm quite honestly sick and tired
of this.  If you have review feedback, then please provide details.
Otherwise, please spare us your tired refrain and vague complaints.

>  I like to have a sufficiently comparable OSS replacement in my disto 
> "SchilliX" and for this reason Garret's os(1) is not suitable for SchilliX. It
> seems to me that I would be more effective if I don't try to help people who 
> don't like help me but rather do the work on my own. I am currently writing my
> own od(1) replacement and I expect it to be ready before the od(1) 
> implementation that is currently in Illumos will offer similar compatibility 
> with the Sun implementation and POSIX. If my code is ready, I will of course 
> publish it immediately.

You are of course welcome to do your own code as you see fit.  If you
provide a superior implementation *and* can convince the rest of the
team that it is sufficiently superior that it should replace what I
wrote, then I will happily allow that to happen.  I'll even agree to
abstain from any decisions relating to od.

What I will tell you, and anyone else here who wants to understand it:

At this point I will personally not be wasting any more of my time
trying to work on getting your code integrated.  I won't stand in the
way, but you now have to find another advocate to work with.

As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather spend the time more productively
than trying to figure out how to appease you, and spending 3+ hours on
the phone to extract what you could have told me in a single sentence is
not the way to curry any particular favor with me.

The other advocates you can work with on this are gwr at nexenta.com and
richlowe at richlowe.net.  As I said, if you convince them that your
changes are appropriate for integration in illumos, then you will have a
path forward.  Good luck.

	- Garrett