[Axiom-developer] RE: proposed fixes

[Page, Bill]

Martin,

On Thursday, June 23, 2005 7:56 AM you wrote:

> Dear Tim, Bill, Camm, *
>
> this is to inform you that I tried to organize the issues on
> IssueTracker a little. I'd like to ask you to go through those
> issues where fixes are proposed, and see which ones you would
> accept for the next "major" release. I think that Axiom 3.9 or
> 3.10, i.e., September or October, would be a good point to inform
> the general public about Axiom's progress.

Great! Thanks for doing this.

> Bill: could you transfer the remaining open bugs from savannah,
> especially #9298...

Ok. Do you know if any other reports form Savannah are missing?

> Camm: when Bill has done this, could you please upload your
> (temporary) fix for the bug in new!

Is that an Axiom patch or a GCL patch? If it is GCL then it
might already be in the version of GCL that we use to build
Axiom.

> -------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I must say that I'm a bit unhappy about the bug fixing - pro{c,gr}ess.
> I think:
> 
> Since Axiom is an Open Source project,

You just said the *Operative Words* -- Axiom is an Open Source project.
Being unhappy about something can only result in an invitation that
*you* do something about it! :)

> and little to no funding is available, we should rather try to fix
> things quickly, rather than wait months until everybody in the project
> had time to review the fix.

I don't think we are really waiting, as such, for anyone to review the
fixes. Whether someone reviews them or not depends entirely on their
personal whims.

The bottleneck in getting proposed fixes into Axiom is just that
no besides Tim Daly is actually posting any changes to the Axiom
source archives. Tim has a million other things to do in this
project beside test patches and commit changes to the archive, so
these get done when he manages to steal time from something else
that he would rather be doing. (We all have lives besides Axiom,
I guess ... but we tend to forget that of others. :)

So the best solution of this problem is if someone (or more
people) besides Tim would start to actively contribute changes
directly to one of the source archives.


> If it turns out that the fix is bad, it is trivial to remove it
> again.

Certainly committing a bad fix to a source repository and later
reversing it is not a major problem. I think the issue (for the
Axiom project at least) is usually more of a philosophical and
design nature. Axiom is a large and conceptually complex system
that, in my opinion has to be treated with a lot of respect for
the presumed but often ill-defined brilliance of it's original
designers - many of whom are no longer available for consultation!

> I do agree (now) that my fix for the parenthesis problem in
> sums and products is not good. However:
>
> * this was spotted quite soon
>
> * there is still no alternative fix available, and my fix at
> least gives correct answers.
>
> We simply don't have the (wo)manpower to do everything the
> "right" way immediately.

I certainly agree with that!

> I'm absolutely certain that a bad fix is better than no fix.

We definitely have different opinions about this. I think
that usually a "bad fix" is much worse than "no fix". As long
as we clearly document what the problem is, then most users
can compensate for such "known problems". The existence of
these known problems is what motivates proper solutions. If
one accepts temporary "bad" solutions, these very often become
permanent since we have no extra resources to correct things
that are now "more or less ..." working.

Of course there is a limit to how many such problems one
can live with.

> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Bounties:
>
> I'd like to propose two bounties:
>
> * a bounty for somebody who implements a fast rational
>   interpolation algorithm

Sounds like a good one to me.

> * a bounty for somebody who implements an interpreter for
>   aldor in lisp.

Say what?! Isn't that exactly what Axiom's interpreter is
right now? What do you mean?

Aldor used to be Axiom's prefer library compiler. I don't
see any reason why this cant be again. Only a few technical
problems remain for it's re-integration in to the new open
source version of Axiom.

> If you reply before tommorow afternoon (european time),
> I could formulate these bounties and send them to
> comp.lang.lisp and sci.math.

I think that is a good idea.

> I'd give only symbolic prices, i.e., 200$ each.

Sounds good to me. The Axiom Foundation is very poor
financially speaking and could afford much more than that
anyway.

---------------------------------------------------------------

> I'm off for two weeks of holidays saturday, so: no email,
> no axiom.

Ah, a life beside Axiom ... :) How's your (new) family coming
along?

Have a great vacation.

Cheers,
Bill Page.