Re: [Kdiff3-user] Contributing and patch application

[Joachim E. <joa...@gm...>]

Hi Patrick,

> Sorry if this is a little off-topic for the -user list but I could not find
> a development channel, please redirect me if there is a better place for
> this discussion.

No problem. For a private discussion you might write to my email as shown on 
the homepage without the "__NO_SPAM__" part.

About your remarks: It is good of you to point them out because I didn't look 
at it that way.

For the README file I applied the patches and noticed that there are more 
things to fix and that's what I did, before I committed the changes.

E.g. the GPL exception was only necessary for Qt3 where for some operating 
systems (Windows) no GPL version was available.

> I suppose the change itself is right, but I did not do it and it should not
> be attributed to me. It is usually accepted to tweak submissions to fix
> typos or whitespace damage but anything beyond this should at least be
> discussed with the submitter. I am perfectly fine with you rejecting my
> patch because of X and Y, talking about them and resubmitting, this is the
> contribution game. That way all what gets in actually comes from me. This
> is not a big deal with the "GPL extension" section I mentioned, but I am a
> little unhappy with...

Completely understandable. I will be more careful about that in the future.

> 3- Why do you comment code instead of removing it?

Because I intended to use it, but then it was not that easy as expected. Yet 
otherwise you are right of course. Probably I should just remove such 
commented out code and rely on version control to fetch it back if needed. I 
wasn't aware that others were looking so closely at my code ;-)

> Both way, it gives a feeling of uncertainty and confusion, it
> seems you do not know where things are going.

The direction is much set by users. If some features or bugs don't make it, 
then just due to lack of time on my side. There are so many things I'd like to 
have in KDiff3 myself and don't get around to do them.

> I hope you do not find these comments too irritating, I really appreciate
> kdiff3 and all the work you put in it, it is one few multiplatform,
> efficient visual diff tools and is pretty important in the source
> control/editing ecosystem. 
Thanks.

> But contributing is a bit difficult and
> unpleasant right now, and I prefer to talk about it rather than moving on.
Yes. I've now activated the git repository on sourceforge will use this in 
future instead of subversion. Perhaps this will help.
If you have any concrete ideas, I'd like to know.

> (Note I did not say a word about sourceforge :-)).
Please give more info about what you mean by that. 

Best regards,
Joachim