FW: Final GPO Service Video + Code

[Jeremy Allison]

On Thu, Jun 05, 2014 at 10:24:35PM +1200, Andrew Bartlett wrote:
> 
> I'm sorry to say it, because I've felt exactly the same way, but in open
> source development, the style and presentation of patches is seen,
> rightly or wrongly, as being far, far more important than their
> function.

I don't think that is true, at least for Samba (maybe
for the Linux kernel, but they can afford to be picky :-).

At least for myself, it doesn't matter if a patch has
the wrong formatting or is submitted in the wrong style
or presentation, if I want the functionality in Samba
I'll re-write it myself if neccessary in order to get
it in :-).

I think other people can attest to that.

Now when you are a member of the Team, or if you've
done enough on Samba that *you're expected to know better*,
then we can appear to put style and presentation over
function.

But that's because by not following the style and
presentation rules that are agreed on by convention,
you're essentially telling everyone else in the
project "yeah I know the rules but they don't apply
to me". In other words you're putting your time
before everyone elses, which is seen as an anti-social
act.

As we (now) discuss everything in public, this
can appear to be intimidating to others as they
see someone on the Team getting a hard time over
style in patches, and worry that they will get
the same treatment.

Trust me - if you're a new contributor and
you're just trying to get something fixed in
Samba - you won't.

If you are trying to contribute something
and you feel badly done to, please feel
free to complain to me and I'll try and
fix it (sometimes behind the scenes :-).

> I know, and folks around here can attest to the battles I
> waged against the 'git style' rules folks wanted me to adhere to.  It
> took me ages, and a mastery of git rebase, but I now produce changes in
> a bisect-able patch series of small and self-contained commits.  It
> takes *ages*, but it also means that when other folks look over my
> changes (say for example as part of our review process), they can
> generally say 'I know what that does', to each step at a time. 

Yes ! A thousand times this ! That last bit "I know what that does"
is *invaluable* when reviewing someone elses patches.

Jeremy.