Re: Disgusted with kbuild developers

Eric S. Raymond
2002-02-15T21:12:30Z

Dave Jones <davej@suse.de>:
> This is something I never understood. CML1 has served us for
> 10 years or so, and suddenly its declared "unfixable".

Yes, and not by me. By the people who wrote it.

> "I'm not hacking that, I'll fix it in CML2" seemed to become
> the attitude. End result ? Linus got pissed off with your
> complaints of non-inclusion, and _fixed_ one of the CML1 problems
> (Configure.help) And how long did it take ? ISTR it was around
> an hour after his first mail was sent to you, me & Jeff.
> 1 hour. Versus the year you spent procrastinating about how
> CML2 would fix it.
>
> Sure CML2 fixes some bits that are not easily fixed in CML1,
> but I wonder sometimes how much of it is/was fixable.

The first thing I heard, from mec two years ago, was "the CML1 code
base is not salvageable". This was then and is now the unanimous opinion of
the kbuild team. Not just mine; in fact, they concluded it before
I entered the picture.

I have seen nothing since to make me change that opinion.
--
Eric S. Raymond