Give me a break

[Walter Bright]

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.