site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com Domainkey-signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=hqfLVHg1i+lngVsEeLVRES9XVjowcSsG7KPO5BW0uEiozsdQ5XRbf+np/iLf/cebH5OIQ6cW7H5wiK2r3hKH4eKma4BcAt0k1VatyNcSq4QVgjxEgs1gAA7RNzZw33Xw8hHGAmgXm1d19rGe0aRDjCDwvmqcBCClpEp4BK/D8lY= On 8/28/06, Corey O'Connor <coreyoconnor@gmail.com> 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. 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 _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... On 8/28/06, Shawn Erickson <shawnce@gmail.com> wrote: 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

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