Re: Common sense in [gentoo-dev] (was Council May Summary: Changes to ChangeLog handling)

[Ângelo Arrifano]

On Tuesday 31 May 2011 00:38:34 Brian Harring wrote:
> On Tue, May 31, 2011 at 12:05:03AM +0200, Andreas K. Huettel wrote:
> > Am Montag 30 Mai 2011, 23:55:52 schrieb Brian Harring:
> > > If someone has a definition that is commonsense, then propose it- the
> > > current "you must log everything" is very, very heavy handed and
> > > basically was a forced situation since QA cannot make folks behave
> > > when the rules are reliant on common sense.
> >
> > Well how about "any change that can influence the behaviour of
> > (portage|your favourite package manager) in any way or present the user
> > with different output"?
>
> Mostly correct, although the problem there is 'influence'; consider:
>
> src_unpack() {
>   bunch of code
> }
>
> being changed into
>
> new_func() {
>   bunch of code
> }
> src_unpack() {
>   invoke new_func
> }
>
> That should have no influence, thus not being ChangeLog'd.  The
> problem is when the dev screws up, and it *has* an influence but no
> ChangeLog.
>
> A more real world example is people abusing eval and other things
> (python eclass for example)- folks can/do argue that it has no
> influence, but the complexity means it may have unexpected affect.
>
> That's the crux of the issue, and it comes down to common sense.
> Come up w/ a sane policy for things like that and I'll owe you some
> beer.
>
> Either way, for the rest of it, as Diego said, LGTM.  I'm just
> nitpicking here to make it absolutely clear to people where we start
> running into policy issues.
>
> ~brian

Not disagreeing at all with what was said, I'm just going to add that adding 
conditionals or exceptions to the rules makes them harder to remember. It is 
easier to remember - you shall not pass - than - you shall not pass if you 
make a change wich does not affect X - .

Regards,
-- 
Angelo Arrifano AKA MiKNiX
Gentoo Embedded developer
GPE maintainer 
http://www.gentoo.org/~miknix
http://miknix.homelinux.com