Give me a break

[Yigal Chripun]

Walter Bright Wrote:

> yigal chripun wrote:
> > Lars T. Kyllingstad Wrote:
> > 
> >> yigal chripun wrote:
> >>> Either you need to have a plan or you need to have a community
> >>> driven process (Java JSRs, Python PEPs).
> >> There is a similar option for D, although it doesn't have a fancy 
> >> abbreviation: You can put enhancement requests in Bugzilla and get
> >>  people to vote for them.
> >> 
> >> -Lars
> > 
> > you must be kidding right? maybe the situation is improving lately
> > but not that long ago I remember posts by downs where he pointed out
> > an old bug in DMD with a patch to fix that bug already in Bugzilla
> > and that fix was in bugzila several *years* without anyone caring.
> 
> If that is the bug I am thinking of, the patch papered over one instance 
> of the problem and didn't fix it at all. The patch even noted that it 
> was incomplete. The real fix required much more extensive work, and 
> there were higher priority problems.
> 
> My general experience with posted compiler patches is about half of them 
> are good, the other half are incorrect and require more development.
> 
> For a more recent example, 3122 contained a patch that was marked as 
> complete and tested, but it had two serious bugs (did not check that a 
> filename was supplied, and did not check for file write errors) and an 
> unnecessary hardcoded OS dependency (on path lengths). These aren't hard 
> to fix, and I merged in the patch with fixes, I'm just trying to say 
> that things are not as simple as just apply patches.
> 
> That said, I still appreciate and encourage posting patches to bugzilla, 
> as even if incomplete they still cut down the work for me that is 
> necessary to fix the problem, and hence they are valuable.

the above implementation details are completely besides the point. 
and to re-iterate:
the point being that there was a bug report with a patch lying around for 1.5 *years* without any kind of _response_.