On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 03:17:16PM +0200, Arfrever Frehtes Taifersar Arahesis wrote:
> It's a temporary workaround for the fact that buildbots don't provide
> config.log files. I will revert r38218 when buildbots are fixed to provide
> config.log files.
Why wasn't this in the log message for r38218?
Can you, please, please, please, try to make a really good habit
of putting such explanations in the log messages when you commit,
instead of putting them into answers to mail by people who are
disturbed by and outraged over your changes because they have
no way to understand why you are making those changes?
Especially if the commit you are making is known to cause problems?
If you make it hard for people to find out the motivation behind
your changes, they will most likely to go "what the fuck?" and
reject your changes.
You see, all Hyrum and Greg are seeing is "you're breaking the
buildbot". They can't understand why you are doing this because
you have never explained it to them.
I believe you have good reasons for your changes to configure,
since I believe you are trying to make subversion work painlessly on
Gentoo where re-compilation of dependency X should not necessarily
trigger recompilation of everything that depends on X. At least that's
what I *think* you are trying to do. But not because you have told me so,
but because I believe that you maintain the Subversion packages in
Gentoo and because I know that Debian is trying to fix similar
problems with apu-config and the like by patching the hell out
of them. I like the idea of fixing this upstream much more than
fixing it in every packaging system on the planet.
But *everyone* here needs to understand the motivation behind your changes
to apply good judgement. If they can't apply good judgement, there's
a risk of tension between developers because people will get the
impression that your goals conflict with theirs. Then we'll end up
wasting time with useless debates on the mailing lists, were people
try to extract information from you which they need in order to apply
good judgement, and possibly end up getting angry if they can't get the
information in the heat of the argument. Please don't take that risk.
Take the time to write a good log message instead, and explain your
plans and the reasons and motivations behind your plans.
For example, this one is also really bad, it gives no useful information:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r38219 | arfrever | 2009-06-27 13:17:24 +0100 (Sat, 27 Jun 2009) | 2 lines
Revert r38164.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stefan
Received on 2009-06-29 16:33:55 CEST