Re: Rewriting the type system

[Jim Blandy <jimb at zwingli dot cygnus dot com>]

Daniel Berlin <dan@cgsoftware.com> writes:
> Jim, GDB development is moving a lot slower than it should.  If
> someone told me, after just rewriting the typesystem, that i needed to
> redo it from scratch, i'd probably just start making my own GDB
> releases instead (in effect, forking GDB).  Not out of spite or
> anything, just so i could get stuff done without having to keep track
> of tons of patches that go months without review.

I apologize if I have been slow to review patches from time to time.
I don't like to feel that I'm a bottleneck in GDB development.

However, in your case, Dan, I think we can back up and ask a more
fundamental question.  You're a smart guy; you've got a lot of energy;
you have a lot of time, too, apparently.  You've been working on GDB
for at least a year and a half now.  You've taken on large, ambitious
tasks.

So, given all that, why are you in the position of waiting for my
approval for your changes?  Why aren't you listed as a maintainer of
the Dwarf2 reader and the symtab reader?

It's because, for whatever reason, you don't take the time to make
your changes correct.

Here is part of the function gnuv3_rtti_type in gnu-v3-abi.c, from
your GCC V3 C++ ABI support patch:

    coreptr =
      *((CORE_ADDR *) (VALUE_CONTENTS_ALL (v) + VALUE_OFFSET (v) +
                       VALUE_EMBEDDED_OFFSET (v)));
    coreptr -= 12;
    *top =
      value_as_long (value_at
                     (builtin_type_int, coreptr, VALUE_BFD_SECTION (v)));
    coreptr += 8;
    vp = value_at (builtin_type_int, coreptr, VALUE_BFD_SECTION (v));

Here we have, in the space of less than a dozen lines of code:

- host == target assumptions (why are you applying `*' to
  target-format data?)

- sizeof (foo) assumptions (what is 8?  what is 12?)

It makes me angry to be asked to review this kind of patch.  If you're
not going to bother with even the most basic rules of GDB development,
why should I bother to read your patches?

You have an extensive history of reverted changes:

2000-11-07  Daniel Berlin  <dberlin@redhat.com>

	* dwarf2read.c: Revert June 5th change for caching of types,
	as per Jim Blandy's request.

and the changes to lookup_symbol that were broken, the minsym sorting
issue that Peter Schauer called you on, etc.

One of the reasons it took me three or four months to review your GCC
V3 C++ ABI changes was that I had to learn enough C++ to be able to
understand the ABI spec.  Isn't that odd?  Why do we need to have our
C++ maintainer's patches reviewed by someone who doesn't know the
language?  As someone said recently, "This, IMHO, is amazingly silly."

Given your record, I'm not sure I think you should be the GDB C++
maintainer, or the maintainer of any part of GDB.