Re: Contributors and maintainers

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: address@hidden (Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer)
> Cc: address@hidden
> Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 21:58:31 +0200
> 
> > Quote #1:
> >
> >   > > On POSIX shells, shell-quote-argument is just as safe as
> >   > > shqq--quote-string, and on non-POSIX shells it works better. So it's a
> >   > > win, in both readability and in portability, to use
> >   > > shell-quote-argument.
> >   > 
> >   > Fixing it does not seem easy at all given I can't trust
> >   > shell-quote-argument.
> >
> >   You can trust it.
> >
> >   > And please be realistic in the amount of trust we can put on the
> >   > complicated implementations for non-Unix shells.  I can't judge them
> >   > myself since I don't know the syntax of those shells at all.  Does
> >   > anyone here know their syntax comprehensively, or checked the
> >   > implementation against the documentation of those shells?
> >
> >   Yes, we do.  Yes, we have.
> 
> This coincided with Random832's demonstration of it being broken for
> csh, and mentioning that the semantics are questionable on Windows if I
> got it right, as well as a mention of a past bug about newline handling
> for POSIX shells.  So I'm afraid you were short of lying to me.  And
> please don't get me wrong but the annoyed and dismissive tone really
> made it obvious that not much thought was put into the response in first
> place, so the factual inaccuracy was not exactly a surprise.

You are changing the subject.  You asked for examples of addressing
your concerns, and I gave you some.  Now it turns out that your real
problem is not with the fact that they were addressed, but with the
fact that the responses disagreed with you.  Which is really what this
is all about: you don't want to accept disagreement.  Disagreement
with you makes you, quite irrationally, agitated, and that prompts you
into looking for rationalizations of your irrational behavior.  So now
I'm suddenly "dismissive", I'm a "liar", and it is "obvious" to you
that the response was "not well thought out".  Of course: if I'd take
your arguments seriously, if I were not a "dismissive liar", then I'd
surely agree with you, right?  Only a "dismissive liar" who doesn't
put much thought into his responses could possibly disagree with you,
right?

> > Quote #2:
> >
> >   > > It might be simpler, but it's wrong, because the result is only
> >   > > correct for Posix shells.
> >   > >
> >   > > Please do use shell-quote-argument instead.
> >   > 
> >   > It's also simpler than the POSIX section of shell-quote-argument.
> >
> >   Simpler doesn't mean correct.
> >
> >   > (defun shell-quote-argument (argument)
> >   >   [...] (cond [...] (t
> >   >     (if (equal argument "")
> >   >         "''"
> >   >       ;; Quote everything except POSIX filename characters.
> >   >       ;; This should be safe enough even for really weird shells.
> >   >       (replace-regexp-in-string
> >   >        "\n" "'\n'"
> >   >        (replace-regexp-in-string "[^-0-9a-zA-Z_./\n]" "\\\\\\&" 
> > argument))))))
> >   > 
> >   > I wonder what "really weird shells" this refers to?
> >
> >   The set of characters special to an arbitrary shell is not known in
> >   advance.
> >
> >   > Certainly not csh, the mechanism it uses for newlines doesn't work
> >   > there.
> >
> >   What did you try that didn't work with csh?
> 
> This is unrelated to the main concern of lacking safety guarantees.

It is related to another "concern" of yours.  See your bug report,
where you echoed this.

> It's also not a response to me.

So what?  It's a concern you expressed, and was part of the thread.

Again, you are changing the subject from the fact of your concerns
being addressed to your refusal to accept our dissenting responses.

> > Quote #3:
> >
> >   > Quoting RMS, coincidentally from a couple days ago:
> >   > 
> >   >     The policy is non-GNU systems are secondary, and lower priority than
> >   >     the GNU system, but we are glad to include support for them in GNU
> >   >     packages if users contribute the necessary code -- provided that
> >   >     code isn't a maintenance problem for us.
> >   > 
> >   >     The maintenainers of any particular package are the ones who judge
> >   >     whether that code is a maintenance problem, since they are the ones
> >   >     it would be a problem for.
> >
> >   I don't see how this is relevant for the issue at hand, since the
> >   necessary code (the shell-quote-argument function) was already
> >   contributed to Emacs years ago, and is used in many places in core
> >   Emacs.  There's no extra effort needed to support more platforms, just
> >   replace one function with another.
> >
> >   > I generally don't want to take responsibility of my code being used on
> >   > non-GNU/non-POSIX systems, but if I can share the responsibility then
> >   > that's fine.
> >
> >   You are sharing the responsibility with a long line of Emacs
> >   developers, all of whom use this function.  I don't see anything you
> >   should worry about, really.
> 
> This tries to push on me a responsibility I cannot take because I don't
> use MS Windows and don't know its shell syntax, and asserts that I
> should stop worrying, i.e. flat-out dismissing my concern.

Once again, a change of subject: I show a direct response to your
concern, and you tell why you didn't like the response.  The fact that
there _was_ a response, i.e. your concern _was_ addressed, is suddenly
no longer of interest to you.

> > As you see, each response is directly related to your text that I
> > cite.  I cannot prove to you that I understood what you were saying,
> > but you can ask any neutral person to read this and tell you what they
> > think about that.  From my side, I can assure you I completely
> > understood everything that you said.
> 
> It seems that we cannot even agree on whether an English sentence does
> or doesn't address a concern raised in another.

Oh yes, we can: you did acknowledge above, albeit implicitly, that
those were responses to your concerns (there were dozens more).  You
just didn't like those responses.  And, for some reason I cannot
imagine, you don't like me personally.  That is all there is to it.

> English is not my mother-tongue either, but I think both our English is
> perfectly good.  Given that, I genuinely have no idea how we can be this
> badly unable to communicate.

It should be clear to any unbiased person who can read English.
(Quite a few of them here have already spoken, but that evidently
wasn't enough for you, probably again because they all said you were
simply wrong.)  There's no problem with communications here, only a
problem with your refusal to accept disagreement and dissent when
submitting patches to a project.