Date:	Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:24:14 -0700
From:	Andy Isaacson <adi@...apodia.org>
To:	Daniel Walker <dwalker@...o99.com>
Cc:	Joe Perches <joe@...ches.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@...dmis.org>
Subject: Re: checkpatch as a tool (was Re: [RFC][PATCH] SCHED_EDF scheduling class)

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 06:11:39PM -0700, Daniel Walker wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 18:01 -0700, Joe Perches wrote:
> > I think it'd be more helpful if instead of merely sending
> > a "hah! checkpatch failure!" email you send the submitter
> > a gentler nudge and a fixed patch.
> 
> I don't say "hah!" like I caught you or something .. I could try to

It does come across that way sometimes.

> soften the emails further so that's not the feeling .. As far as sending
> fixed patches to people it's not really feasible due to the number of
> patches I would have to send out..

I'd rather see 10% coverage with useful patches than 100% coverage of
"there is some problem in this patch but I can't be bothered to say
what".

> The other issues is that if I send a corrected patch I could become
> responsible for that persons patch instead of them ..

Not very likely unless you take that burden on yourself.

> I could send out delta patches, however, I don't want people to rely
> on me to fix these issues.. Ideally people would correct them prior to
> sending the patches out..

Sure, and checkpatch is useful for that -- and more helper scripts to
automate the process would be helpful.  For example, extending "git
send-email" to have an optional "warn about checkpatch failures" would
be a useful addition, especially if it's not too annoying.  (I find the
current checkpatch output somewhat annoying, so just including that
wouldn't be great IMO.)

I would strongly recommend that you redistribute the effort you're
putting in, and only send messages where you have non-trivial input to
the development process.  For example, saying "This patch has checkpatch
errors.  Please fix the indentation and the EXPORT_SYMBOL errors, and
move function declarations to foo.h" would be much much more useful than
"it looks like you have a few style issues".

Let's go through a few of your recent checkpatch messages:

Message-Id: <1252936556.28368.215.camel@...ktop>
> Could you run this through checkpatch also, it looks like you have a few
> style issues..

Patch <1252870707-4824-5-git-send-email-felipe.contreras@...il.com> is a
strict improvement on the existing code, and changing the comma spacing
on just these two lines to silence checkpatch would make the file
inconsistent.  Changing all 12 functionlike #defines in this file would
be outside the purview of this patch.  You could have done the robotlike
patch and fixed the issue in this file in the time it would have taken
to do this analysis, and then you would have seen that the file has far
worse issues than the trivial ones checkpatch flagged in Felipe's patch.

Verdict: useless.

Message-Id: <1252465099.14793.49.camel@...ktop>
> All the lines like the above are all producing checkpatch errors.. It
> looks like the open brace needs to be up with the equals ..

Joe is correct in his response, in this case the "error" from checkpatch
is ignorable.  Your responses in <1252467842.14793.66.camel@...ktop> and
<1252466482.14793.60.camel@...ktop> are dismissive of exactly the
concerns people are raising here, and you badly misstate your case when
you say
> I would if this was code in the kernel already, but it's not.
without apologizing when your mistake was pointed out.

Verdict: useless, and abrasive in your response to correction.

Message-Id: <1253553472.9654.236.camel@...ktop>
One right (and reasonable to say in text although a patch would have
been equally reasonable, and hardly any more work to generate), one
wrong.  I strongly wouldn't have bothered to send this message.

Verdict: mediocre.

Message-Id: <1253504435.9654.221.camel@...ktop>
AFAICS you didn't even read the checkpatch output, just saw a lot of
output and reflexively sent email.  Obviously the 0xA0 is due to some
sort of editor/mailer issue not a style issue.

Verdict: useless.

Message-Id: <1253326790.6699.38.camel@...ktop>
Reasonable, although you'd do better to lead with the reasonable comment
and then follow with a mention of chckpatch rather than the other way
around.

Verdict: useful.

Message-Id: <1253293100.7060.46.camel@...ktop>
Whitespace errors in a delta (as opposed to a new submission, especially
from a new contributor) are rarely worth whingeing about, and in this
case it's merely duplicating the error on the line above the diff.

Verdict: mediocre.

Message-Id: <1253291944.7060.42.camel@...ktop>
Saying "we use checkpatch.pl" to someone who's been contributing since
before Git existed is condescending in the extreme -- it'd be bad enough
to say it to a first-time contributor, but this is just beyond the pale.
The checkpatch output is fairly useful and clearly Lennart did find the
reminder useful, but you could have been less abrasive by putting in a
little more work.

Verdict: useful.

Message-Id: <1253092251.11643.569.camel@...ktop>
davem already gave useful commentary 2 hours before your mail, so I
wouldn't have bothered to send your mail.  If you do send this, it would
be more useful to say "You seem to use spaces for indentation
everywhere, could you fix that and run checkpatch before re-submitting".

Verdict: technically useful but socially abrasive.


In summary, of 8 messages reviewed that's 3 completely useless messages,
2 of middling use, and 3 useful ones.  Of that, two or three times you
were strongly abrasive IMO.

That's about the proportion I've anecdotally observed in your checkpatch
mails (a bit more positive than I would have guessed actually).  If
you'd sent only three of those eight messages, I think you'd be getting
much less negative feedback, and you'd have had 166% more time to spend
on each message.

FWIW, I think you have a valuable contribution but it's being drowned
out by your errors and non-useful messages.  Please be more careful to
not send erroneous messages, contribute patches to address (even just
some of!) the errors you flag, graciously acknowledge your errors when
you're called on them (and learn from the corrections!), and perhaps
people will lay off on you.

-andy
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