Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 22 Jun 2001 10:24:58 -0400 | From | "Eric S. Raymond" <> | Subject | Re: Missing help entries in 2.4.6pre5 |
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David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>: > The irritation only happened because you seem to have ignored the remainder > of my original response and patch - which explained the status of the Ocelot > and XScale options, and which removed the other offending option from > Config.in completely. I'd removed the corresponding code before syncing up > with Linus because it wanted rewriting before it could be submitted, just > forgotten to remove the config option for it.
No, I remember that. But if I don't remind lkml periodically that there is work not done on this, I fear it will slide to the bottom of peoples' to-do lists and fall off. That's how we got to the distressing state where about 1/4 of the configuration symbols weren't documented.
I solved this problem by (a) working like a dog at writing help entries myself, and (b) using a combination of supplication and irritation on configuration maintainers to get them to hold up their end. This was effective; we've gone from 537 undocumented symbols to 2.
In any situation like this, supplication tends to work well initially; you catch the cooperative people who would almost have done what you needed anyway, which is usually 60% or more of them. As you get towards the bottom of the barrel, (subtle) irritation becomes more important. While it isn't *necessarily* the case that the last few holdouts won't move unless you're a persistent pain in the butt about it, that's the smart way to bet.
(I've done jobs like this before. Couldn't you tell? :-))
> I'm already rejecting patches which add new config entries but don't add > the corresponding help text. What more do you want?
That's very good, and I thank you for that policy. From *you*, I don't want anything else. From the person(s) reponsible for the missing symbols, I want documentation. The problem is that, lacking a detailed database of who is responsible for what, I don't know how to prod each of the people I really want to supplicate/irritate without having you see it also. -- <a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak. -- George Orwell, "You and the Atom Bomb", 1945 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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