Re: Re: Re: Re: MACFORGE request for a project
Re: Re: Re: Re: MACFORGE request for a project
- Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: MACFORGE request for a project
- From: "Corey O'Connor" <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 12:19:20 -0700
On 8/28/06, Shawn Erickson <email@hidden> wrote:
On 8/28/06, Corey O'Connor <email@hidden> wrote:
> The point of cleaning up code is to improve the conceptual mapping
> from the requirements to the implementation. To me the most basic
> code-cleanup is reformatting, "K&R removal", variable renaming, and
> documentation. Beyond this is refactoring. All of these would provide
> benefit to a programming wanting to get involved in a open-source
> project and long-term benefit to programmers already involved. In my
> experience not willing to perform code maintenance is equivalent to
> not wanting to document code.
Hold on here... I was making no statement about the merits of such
things (please don't presume that and I don't need any education on
the subject).
haha. Sorry. I usually presume these mailing lists are self-selecting
and only people familiar with the software development process are
actually active on them. But I have been wrong in the past....
I am questioning the feasibility of doing this from outside of Apple
without visibility into what Apple is currently doing or is planning
to do with various segments of the code. Speaking from experience you
need much better visibility into such things if you want to do
something like this without causing problems to current development
and you want acceptance of such code backing into main branches.
Well, speaking from experience I've seen companies so worried of
performing code-cleanup due to perceived problems the changes would
cause that the companies never revisit code. I could argue that the
long-term cost of this greatly exceeded the immediate cost of a tricky
integration.
I think you make a good point, but I don't think it should stop me.
From my point of view documenting and cleaning up code is an effective
way to learn a system. If, in doing so, I do something of value I'd
hope a reasonable engineer would recognize that and actively work to
incorporate that work. If I waited for Apple I think I may wait
forever. ;-)
A dialog should be started between folks interested and Apple first to
establish the feasibility of such a thing, align it with any coding
style requirements that Apple has (best if you want Apple to pick it
up), etc. before any work begins, otherwise you will likely just be
wasting your time.
I don't think I'd be wasting my time if my goal is only to learn a
system. Any work might never be integrated into the production system
though. Still, other open-source systems work by incorporating any
work that adds value with the intention of performing continual
incremental improvements to migrate questionable but valuable code to
solid code within the style guidelines. There is value in this and
there is value in insuring all code is added only when it correspond
to a given style guidelines. There are cost and benefits processes
all along the Evolved<->Designed spectrum.
I'd hope the style guidelines Apple likes are already documented somewhere....
--
-Corey O'Connor
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