Notes from Ben's "contribute to ghc" discussion

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

Why are you so hostile to Chris? I don’t think that this is an appropriate way to treat somebody who is making a suggestion in good faith.

Chris may not have contributed to GHC, but apart from co-authoring the currently most popular Haskell book, he has consistently contributed to helping people who are new to the language (on Slack, IRC, in blog posts, etc). He has suck a ton of time into moving the language forward.

Moreover, he knows a thing or two about helping newcomers in an effective manner. And he is right in his critique that it is hard to contribute to GHC.

For example, I recently wrote a patch concerning compatibility with macOS Sierra and even posted about it on this list:

  https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2016-July/012512.html <https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/ghc-devs/2016-July/012512.html>

It’s a small patch, and I just don’t have the time to jump through all the hoops to get it into the repo.

And now before you accuse me of not having contributed to GHC, maybe check the git logs first.

In summary, if you don’t want to consider that maybe it is harder to contribute to GHC than it has to be and making it easier maybe would lead to more contributions, that is one thing. However, I do insist that suggestions made in good faith on this list are treated politely and not being brutally shot down.

Simon, I imagine you agree with me here.

Manuel

> Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com>:
> 
> 
> On Sat, Sep 24, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Christopher Allen <cma at bitemyapp.com <mailto:cma at bitemyapp.com>> wrote:
> This is so short-sighted and wrong that I don't think there's any
> point in my saying more. You've made it clear you don't care.
> 
> And --- note that I am not a ghc developer --- have made it clear that you do not care how much extra work you make for already massively overworked ghc developers.
> You're not contributing. You're not helping. You're derailing.
> 
> -- 
> brandon s allbery kf8nh                               sine nomine associates
> allbery.b at gmail.com <mailto:allbery.b at gmail.com>                                  ballbery at sinenomine.net <mailto:ballbery at sinenomine.net>
> unix, openafs, kerberos, infrastructure, xmonad        http://sinenomine.net <http://sinenomine.net/>_______________________________________________
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