18 Dec
2020
18 Dec
'20
11:41 p.m.
On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 06:43:32AM -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
Source management to the rescue. I hired an extremely
smart guy (he
reads papers on string theory, the physics ones, for fun). Taught him
how to use our tools. Gave him a bug to fix. He looks at the source
file and goes "This is crap, I'm gonna rewrite it so it is clean".
Then remembers I showed him how he could see how the file evolved.
So he looks at the first version of the file. It is *exactly* what he
was going to write. Huh. He starts going through the history. Oh,
this wart is for IRIX. This wart is for windows 2000 that reuses PIDs
right away. This wart is for NFS. Etc.
In the end, he added another wart to fix the bug and left the file alone.
I did say he was smart.
....and this is why when I do code reviews, I'm asking for
improvements in the commit (or CL) description at least as much as I
am pointing out issues in the code itself. In some cases, when the
contributor is someone for whom English is not their first language,
I'll end up rewriting the commit description as well. Code archeology
is *definitely* a powerful tool, but this relies on the source control
metadata is sufficiently rich; in some cases, having links to bug
trackers or mailing list discussions are super-useful.
- Ted