Re: On regressions and carelessness

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

Hi Tristan,

I'm sorry that you've had this experience - as someone who's been around
GTK+ a long time, I'm upset to see commit wars going on.

I could say a lot here, but I'll stop at saying that exception of
emergency cases (blocking a release, build breaks), I except everybody
to make sure that all other relevant people are signed off on a
consensus *before* a revert. This applies ten times as much to a revert
of a revert.

- Owen

On Sat, 2013-04-27 at 18:21 +0900, Tristan Van Berkom wrote:

> I am sorry to bore you all with this email, I've tried to resolve this
> in bugzilla and IRC and failed, if I am to have any trust in GTK+
> development practices, I must unfortunately share this conflict
> in public.
>
> Around a week ago, while I was tirelessly spending my evenings and
> weekends improving Glade, I noticed a height-for-width regression
> in GtkBin derived widgets.
>
> While this might not be serious or noticeable for many GNOME core
> applications, the regression sticks out like a sore thumb in Glade
> (since Glade uses wrapping labels for all of it's property editors, in the
> interest of economizing space), and frankly I expect GTK+ to be much
> much more than just a toolbox for the current GNOME core applications.
>
> The regression was originally introduced in the 3.8 cycle with this commit:
>
>     commit f4438a1ffc6aaab92fb6b751cd16e95c2abaa0e3
>     Author: Jasper St. Pierre <jstpierre mecheye net>
>     Date:   Thu Nov 8 19:13:52 2012 -0500
>
> Which was signed off by Benjamin Otte.
>
> My course of action was to fix the regression, as this is code of my
> own doing, and I spent many hours getting it right the first time, I
> understand that I have license to fix these things, but fixing it would
> not be enough, because if I just fix the regression, who's to say that
> this type of careless regression will not recur in the future ?
>
> So, in the interest of notifying those responsible for the regression,
> I first opened this bug:
>        https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=698433
>
> Naturally, I wanted to be sure that those who removed code and
> caused regressions will pay better attention in the future, so I put
> Jasper and Benjamin on CC explicitly in the bug report, in the hope
> that they will learn from this and be more careful in the future.
>
> So, I closed the bug after fixing it with this commit:
>
>     commit b164df74506505ac0f4559744ad9b59b5ea57ebf
>     Author: Tristan Van Berkom <tristanvb openismus com>
>     Date:   Sat Apr 20 17:52:16 2013 +0900
>
> And all was well in the world again, labels wrapped and requested
> enough height inside their check buttons.
>
> Until yesterday, when I updated my local copy of GTK+ sources again
> and rebuilt Glade and found the nasty behaviour again.
>
> This was a blow to the face, the regression was silently re-introduced
> without re-opening bug 698433, without even acknowledging that
> there is a serious misbehaviour caused by this commit.
>
> After looking through the commit log today I find the offending commit
>
>     commit b8e4adfff9ba62330a71ea7498595227979bb4f0
>     Author: Benjamin Otte <otte redhat com>
>     Date:   Mon Apr 22 08:23:08 2013 -0400
>
> This looks very irresponsible to me, and is alarming for several
> reasons.
>
>  a.) It seems that the regression is only a matter of Benjamin's taste,
>       he does not like how things are implemented, and instead of
>       changing the implementation, he has simply removed code and
>       caused regressions.
>
>  b.) It seems that Benjamin's superiority complex transcends the
>       need for software that actually works. He would rather have
>       the last word and break GTK+ in doing so, than swallowing
>       his own pride and living with some code he doesn't like, at
>       least until which time he could replace it with code that works
>       without introducing regressions in the meantime.
>
>       This is called "too cool for school".
>
>  c.) Worse still, he presumes to suddenly turn this in to my own
>       problem. It is his prerogative that he remove code that does
>       not suit his taste, and that the regressions he causes should be
>       my own fault. That I should devote more of my own time to
>       change this implementation to his taste, for "free as in beer".
>
> All I ask of you, dear fellow GTK+ developers, is that responsibility
> be taken for your own actions. If your code introduces a regression,
> you should be responsible for fixing that regression, it's not right
> to introduce regressions and expect that others clean up the mess
> you leave behind.
>
> Carelessness is something that we all practice at times, but we
> should strive to be less careless. If you read code and you are
> uncertain what it does, "Assume people mean well", don't assume
> that it's useless and can be safely removed. Removing code that
> you do not understand is almost certain to cause breakage.
>
> By all means, simplify code that you do not understand at first
> sight, by first understanding why it exists and then replacing it with
> something that is more readable, that is a step forward, careless
> removal of code however is not a step forward.
>
> I hope you will understand the awkwardness of this, it is with
> much regret that I bring this topic to the list.
>
> I sincerely hope that measures will be taken to avoid this type
> of carelessness and irresponsibility in the future.
>
> Best Regards,
>         -Tristan
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