Robert,
> http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/28927.1236820868@sss.pgh.pa.us
>
> That's not a positive review, but when it comes down to it, it's a
> pretty factual email. IMHO, anyway, and YMMV.
Really? I've always thought that was a pretty constructive review. It
certainly gave me the laundry list of things I'd have to fix to ever get
that change in, and how what looked like a simple patch is actually
fairly complicated.
> My own experience is different from yours, I guess. I actually like
> it when I post a patch, or suggest a concept, and Tom fires back with
> a laundry list of reasons it won't work.
This can be a problem with new submitters, though. If you're not used
to the current community dialog, that email can be taken as "your idea
is stupid because" rather than what it actually means, which is "fix
these issues and resubmit, please". That's often not clearly
communicated, and is important with new submitters.
> It often induces me to step
> back and approach the same problem from a different and better angle,
> and the result is often better for it. What I don't like is when I
> (or anyone) posts a patch and somebody says something that boils down
> to "no one wants that". *That* ticks me off. Because you know what?
> At a minimum, *I* want that. If I didn't, I wouldn't have written a
> patch. And usually, the customers I support want that, too. Now,
> somebody else may not want it, and that is fine. But IMHO, posting a
> patch should be considered prima facie evidence of non-zero demand for
> the associated feature.
On the other hand, saying "this patch has potential side effects /
peformance penalty / makes admin more complex / has a lot of code to
maintain. How common is the use-case you're talking about?" is legit.
Features which impose a "cost" on people who don't use them need to be
justified as "useful enough" to be worth the cost.
--
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com
