kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Dick Hollenbeck <dick@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 11/22/2011 12:26 PM, Brian F. G. Bidulock wrote:
> Dick,
>
> On Tue, 22 Nov 2011, Dick Hollenbeck wrote:
>
>> One of the best ways to get started actually contributing to KiCad is to offer byte sized
>> patches which concentrate on one or two public member fields, and provides accessors for
>> these, making the fields protected or private.  I cannot tell you how many of these kinds
>> of patches that Wayne and I have made.  I did scores of them in 2008.  Wayne has done more
>> than that in the last two years.
>>
>> This procedure, if continued by enough man-hours, would transition KiCad more in the
>> direction of an object oriented design.  We remember that KiCad was originally C code not
>> C++.  So it has been in evolution for the last several years, all the while churning out
>> boards that we all benefit from.
>>
>> Current "management" is incapable of doing this because current management is not paid
>> enough to work on this project full time.  To help with this evolution, the door is open
>> to more volunteers.  The product of the work should be reasonably sized patches,
>> addressing one or two fields at a time.  Even doing this, these are sometimes thousand
>> line patches.
>>
>> No disagreement on the need.  Just in attitude, and willingness to contribute in a way
>> that is appropriate.
>>
> Why one or two fields?  This makes for unnecessary work.
>
> Why not them all?  You see, the easiest way to do this is t
> just make all the fields private and then use the compiler
> to identify everywhere that contract is broken, change each
> occurrence to use an accessor, and they you're done.  There
> should be absolutely no change in behaviour unless there is
> a compiler bug.  At least that's what I did over a year ago.
>
> Next step would be to refactor the accessors: e.g. factoring
> setX(), setY() to move(), etc.
>
> Having already done it once, I don't feel much like doing it
> again myself.


Then why are you here?  What is your point?  Make the patch contribution, all fields if
you want, and I will personally give it extra consideration.

If you are here to only create mischief and take shots, we can do without that.

Contribute, do it like a team player, or go away please.

This is your best chance, right here, right now, to be taken into this team or be shut out.

Dick