[Gluster-devel] Performance Translators' Stability and Usefulness

[Geoff Kassel]

Hi Anand,
   If you look back through the list archives, no one other than me replied to 
the original QA thread where I first posted my patches. Nor to the Savannah 
patch tracker thread where I also posted my patches. (Interesting how those 
trackers have been disabled now...)

   It took me pressing the issue after discovering yet another bug that we 
even started talking about my patches. So yes, my patches were effectively 
ignored.

   At the time, you did mention that the code the patches were to be applied 
against was being reworked, in addition to your comments about my code 
comments.

   I explained the comments as being necessary to avoid the automated tool 
flagging potential issues again on reuse of that tool - other comments for 
future QA work. There was no follow up on that from you, nor suggestion on 
how I might improve these comments to your standards.

   I continued to supply patches in the Savannah tracker against the latest 
stable 1.3 branch - which included some refactoring for your reworked code, 
IIRC - for some time after that discussion. All of my patches were in sync 
with the code from publically available 1.3 branch repository within days of 
a new TLA patchset.

   None of these were adopted either.

   I simply ran out of spare time to maintain this patchset, and I got tired 
of pressing an issue (QA) that you and the dev team clearly weren't 
interested in.

   I don't have the kind of spare time needed to do the sort of in-depth 
re-audit your code from scratch (as would be needed) in the manner that I did 
back then. So I can't meet your request at this time, sorry.

   As I've suggested elsewhere, now that you apparently have the resources for 
a stand-alone QA team - this team might want to at least use the tools I've 
used to generate these patches - RATS and FlawFinder.

   That way you can generate the kind of QA work I was producing with the kind 
of comment style you prefer.

   The only way I can conceive of being able to help now is in patching 
individual issues. However, I can really only feasibly do that with my time 
constraints if I've got regression tests to make sure I'm not inadvertently 
breaking other functionality.

   Hence my continued requests for these.

Geoff.

On Tue, 7 Jul 2009, Anand Avati wrote:
> >   I've also gone one better than just advice - I've given up significant
> > portions of my limited spare time to audit and patch a not-insignificant
> > portion of the GlusterFS code, in order to deal with the stability issues
> > I and others were encountering. My patches were ignored, on the grounds
> > that it contained otherwise unobtrusive comments which were quite
> > necessary to the audit.
>
> Geoff, we really appreciate your efforts, both on the fronts of your
> patch submissions and for voicing your opinions freely. We also
> acknowledge the positive intentions behind this thread. As far as your
> patch submissions are concerned, there is probably a misunderstanding.
> Your patches were not ignored. We do value your efforts. The patches
> which you submitted, even at the time of your submission were not
> applicable to the codebase.
>
> Patch 1 (in glusterfsd.c) -- this file was reworked and almost
> rewritten from scratch to work as both client and server.
>
> Patch 2 (glusterfs-fuse/src/glusterfs.c) -- this module was
> reimplemented as a new translator (since a separate client was no more
> needed).
>
> Patch 3 (protocol.c) -- with the introduction of non blocking IO and
> binary protocol, nothing of this file remained.
>
> What I am hoping to convey is that, the reason your patches did not
> make it to the repository was because it needed significant reworking
> to even apply. I did indeed comment about code comments of the style
> /* FlawFinder: */ but then, that definitely was _not_ the reason they
> weren't included. Please understand that nothing was ignored
> intentionally.
>
> This being said, I can totally understand the efforts which you have
> been putting to maintain patchsets by yourself and keeping them up to
> date with the repository. I request you to resubmit them (with git
> format-patch) against the HEAD of the repository.
>
> Thanks,
> Avati