On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 2:46 PM Martin Sebor <mse...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 12/11/18 11:15 AM, Joseph Myers wrote: > > On Tue, 11 Dec 2018, Martin Sebor wrote: > > > >> I recently brought up the question of the write w/o approval > >> policy on the gcc list: > >> > >> https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2018-11/msg00165.html > >> > >> looking for clarification. Except for Jeff's comment (which > >> I'm afraid didn't really clarify things), didn't get any. > > > > I think "will the person who objects to my work the most be able to find a > > fault with my fix?" in the policy on obviousness is clear enough. A > > policy decision on what is or is not part of a language extension can't be > > obvious, and nor can determining subtle questions of exactly what the > > definition of some internal interface is or should be. > > Anything that someone might find fault with is so broad as to > remove the ability to make the judgment in any case. Reviewers > have been known to find fault with the slightest things, from > trivial formatting nits, to punctuation in comments, to names > of variables, to the location of new tests, to ChangeLogs. > > If the policy's intent is not to let people make judgment calls > then it ought to be updated. I have no proposal for changes to > it at the moment, but I don't see how anyone can reasonably > object to someone posting a patch and saying "if there are no > objections I will go ahead and commit this change because I think > it's obviously correct." If even that is against the policy then > change it to make that clear (though I sincerely hope that isn't > so).
I don't think anyone objected to your mail, they were just disagreeing that the patch was obvious. That is also a judgment call. IMO there's no need to have an ironclad policy here, since the consequences of a particular change being "wrongly" consider either obvious or non-obvious are small. Jason
