Re: [PATCH v1 07/25] contrib: remove 'git-jump'

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: May 9, 2014, 15:20 UTC
Message-ID: <20140509152005.GB18197@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <536c399454062_741a161d31099@nysa.notmuch>

On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 09:12:36PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Jeff King wrote:
> > On Thu, May 08, 2014 at 07:58:18PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> > 
> > > No activity, no tests.
> > 
> > Like diff-highlight, I don't think "no activity" is a useful indicator.
> > I use this daily, and several people have commented off-list to me that
> > they use it, too.
> 
> Add tests then.

I don't really feel like spending time on it right now. There are better uses of my time.

I thought on this for a while before responding. Am I simply being lazy and a bad programmer not to write tests? Am I propagating a double standard where I do not have to write tests?

Here's the conclusion I came to. Sure, some tests are better than no tests. But the code works, empirically; I use it every day. It is not changing, so the chances of regression are low. I can spend an hour writing tests that demonstrate what I already know. I can even spend several hours trying to come up with torture cases that might demonstrate a potential failure that nobody in the real world experiences. But why?

Because YOU, who have no interest whatsoever in either this script or diff-highlight, have decided to demand that I write them, or spend time spinning the code into its own repository. Sorry, but I have more useful things to do than appease you.

I have no problem with cleaning up cruft in contrib that is broken and nobody uses; it is a potential hazard and time-waster for people who look in that directory. But when people say "no, this is maintained, I use it, and it works", I really don't see the point in you arguing with them. Nobody benefits.

> It this is never meant to move to the core, then it should go
> out-of-tree anyway.

"should" in your opinion. I know, I know, you will quote contrib/README at me. If Junio wants to enforce "contrib is only for things which are meant to graduate" in his tree, then I will abide by that and maintain these scripts out-of-tree. But I would rather see an actual decision from the maintainer on that, and not an 8-year-old README which clearly has not been followed in the intervening years.

And speaking of wasted time, I do not plan on responding further to you in this thread. I am telling you ahead of time that this is the case, because elsewhere[1] I saw you complaining that Junio did not respond to your emails, which you seemed to think was because he cannot admit that he was wrong. So I want to say up front that I am going to avoid interacting with you further because it generally seems fruitless, consumes a large amount of time, and causes me a great deal of stress.

-Peff

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/248441