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If anyone else is wondering like me who Bruce Evans is: > Bruce Evans <bde@FreeBSD.org> > Bruce is the Style Police-Meister. When you do a commit that could ha

by sedatk 6y ago

If anyone else is wondering like me who Bruce Evans is: > Bruce Evans <bde@FreeBSD.org> > Bruce is the Style Police-Meister. When you do a commit that could have been done better, Bruce will be there to tell you. Be thankful that someone is. Bruce is also very knowledgeable on the various standards applicable to FreeBSD. https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/people.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committ...

fipar 6y ago
Seems he had an approach to reviews worthy of emulation: "Code reviews from Bruce came in three flavours, "mild", "brucified" and "brucifiction", but they were never personal: It was always only about the code, the mistakes, the sloppy thinking, the missing historical context, the ambiguous standards - and the style(9) transgressions." Source: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributors/contrib-develinmemoriam.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contrib...
- jasone 6y ago
  Bruce's reviews were singularly masterful. He consistently condensed valuable layers of meaning into terse prose in a way that I have never experienced otherwise. As I would uncover these layers during repeated readings, I would develop the unshakable feeling that even as brilliant as Bruce was, he must have put great care and effort into his writing.
  - huslage 6y ago
    Do you know of a good example?
- loeg 6y ago
  I wouldn't suggest emulating it. His approach to review was to exhaustively detail every perceived bug in any particular file when someone touched that file. Preexisting issues unrelated to the change. Style warts unrelated to the change. Subjective opinions unrelated to the change. In his emails, every one of these was a "bug." There is some value in suggesting adjacent areas for future work, if authors have time and interest, but BDE went well beyond that. I think Bruce should be admired for his demonstrated desire to improve FreeBSD, and for his great attention to detail. But I would not like anyone to emulate his code review emails.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    If you're reviewing a block of code, you need to review the whole final version (not just the diff) or you risk missing context and interactions. If you're doing that, it's simpler to just review the whole thing and not filter out some parts just because you later notice that it predates the current patch. Although I would tend to hope that he doesn't treat pre-existing issues as blockers, I can certainly see why a person would take that approach if the goal is code quality.
    - loeg 6y ago
      Please do not rush to defend that which you are clearly unfamiliar with.
    - wejick 6y ago
      Touching other lines that are not related to intended changes will only obscure the situation.
markjdb 6y ago
Also mentioned here: https://lwn.net/Articles/808733/ https://lwn.net/Articles/808733/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
He is the author of bcc, as86 and ld86. Write K&R C and compile to 16-bit for 8086 or 3086. https://github.com/lkundrak/dev86 https://github.com/lkundrak/dev86 In the early days of Linux, bcc was used in building the kernel. bcc used to be required for ELKS. bcc is still used today, e.g., in compiling VirtualBox. http://web.archive.org/web/20200427081559/https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux%20build%20instructions http://web.archive.org/web/20200427081559/https://www.virtua...
- sedatk 6y ago
  Didn't know, thanks for the extra info!

by sedatk 6y ago

fipar 6y ago

Seems he had an approach to reviews worthy of emulation: "Code reviews from Bruce came in three flavours, "mild", "brucified" and "brucifiction", but they were never personal: It was always only about the code, the mistakes, the sloppy thinking, the missing historical context, the ambiguous standards - and the style(9) transgressions." Source: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contributors/contrib-develinmemoriam.html https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/contrib...

jasone 6y ago
Bruce's reviews were singularly masterful. He consistently condensed valuable layers of meaning into terse prose in a way that I have never experienced otherwise. As I would uncover these layers during repeated readings, I would develop the unshakable feeling that even as brilliant as Bruce was, he must have put great care and effort into his writing.
- huslage 6y ago
  Do you know of a good example?
loeg 6y ago
I wouldn't suggest emulating it. His approach to review was to exhaustively detail every perceived bug in any particular file when someone touched that file. Preexisting issues unrelated to the change. Style warts unrelated to the change. Subjective opinions unrelated to the change. In his emails, every one of these was a "bug." There is some value in suggesting adjacent areas for future work, if authors have time and interest, but BDE went well beyond that. I think Bruce should be admired for his demonstrated desire to improve FreeBSD, and for his great attention to detail. But I would not like anyone to emulate his code review emails.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  If you're reviewing a block of code, you need to review the whole final version (not just the diff) or you risk missing context and interactions. If you're doing that, it's simpler to just review the whole thing and not filter out some parts just because you later notice that it predates the current patch. Although I would tend to hope that he doesn't treat pre-existing issues as blockers, I can certainly see why a person would take that approach if the goal is code quality.
  - loeg 6y ago
    Please do not rush to defend that which you are clearly unfamiliar with.
  - wejick 6y ago
    Touching other lines that are not related to intended changes will only obscure the situation.

markjdb 6y ago

Also mentioned here: https://lwn.net/Articles/808733/ https://lwn.net/Articles/808733/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

He is the author of bcc, as86 and ld86. Write K&R C and compile to 16-bit for 8086 or 3086. https://github.com/lkundrak/dev86 https://github.com/lkundrak/dev86 In the early days of Linux, bcc was used in building the kernel. bcc used to be required for ELKS. bcc is still used today, e.g., in compiling VirtualBox. http://web.archive.org/web/20200427081559/https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux%20build%20instructions http://web.archive.org/web/20200427081559/https://www.virtua...

sedatk 6y ago
Didn't know, thanks for the extra info!