Re: [PATCH 00/44 take 2] [UBI] Unsorted Block Images

Artem Bityutskiy
2007-02-19T17:51:48Z

On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 09:33 -0500, Theodore Tso wrote:
> It made it much, much, MUCH harder to review. Especially given that
> the documentation was separated from the implementation. As I looked
> at the implementation, there was no way to look and what it was
> supposed to do without flipping back to a previous e-mail message and
> losing my place.

I will send Build stuff as the last patch next time, thanks, point
taken.

I just used different concept: one looks at declaration and the overall
picture becomes clear because _there is_ documentation. One does not
look at the implementation to grasp picture on surface.

But your point is fair. I assume _programmers_ look in .c first. Users
may always generate a pdf. I will do what you advise.

May be a good compromise would be to have just brief comments at
headers, and full specification at .c. I will think about this, thanks.

> > This reflects the way of my thinking. I see UBI as a set of units with
> > defined interfaces. So I even physically split the interface description
> > into files. I still think it is easier to grasp the architecture this
> > way.
>
> Speaking as someone who was coming into it cold, it actually made it
> far more difficult. Your units were too small, so that meant the
> number of interfaces that were created as a result were huge! (Around
> 20 _sets_ of interfaces, all of which had to be comprehended for what
> should have been a relatively simple set of functionality!)

Why not? Some stuff may probably be merged. _Specific_ advices are
welcome.

> And when you create that many interfaces, it adds inertia to changing
> the interfaces later on, because it's sometimes not clear how many
> users of the interface there really are. My general rule of thumb is
> that if an interface only has one user, then it may be a good idea to
> combine it with the user of that interface, and then make the
> functions involved be a static, so that it becomes clear the only user
> of that functoin is within that one file. You can take this too far,
> and to extremes it doesn't work all that well, but the UBI layer has
> gone waaaaaay off the deep end in terms of functional decomposition.

Well... I do not want any flame on this topic. It is about taste,
trade-offs, compromises. It is difficult to provide _objective_ and
killing arguments here. But I will think on this, point taken, thanks.

--
Best regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Битюцкий Артём)