Re: [PATCH RFA] Zap EXTRA_FRAME_INFO for ARM target

[Kevin Buettner <kevinb at redhat dot com>]

On Jan 21, 12:57pm, Jason R Thorpe wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 21, 2002 at 01:45:28PM -0700, Kevin Buettner wrote:
> 
>  > > Thinking about it Jason was correct in taking this aproach (I suspect 
>  > > I've done this with other targets).  A patch making the single 
>  > > independant change of eliminating EXTRA_FRAME_INFO is mechanical, and as 
>  > > such, can be treated as obvious.
>  > 
> 
> ...
> 
>  > I do agree, however, that Jason was correct in his approach for the
>  > alpha since the alpha target doesn't have any listed maintainers.
> 
> Just to be clear... I treated it as obvious since in several e-mails Andrew
> has said that the process of multi-arch'ing a target is considered obvious,
> and the removal of EXTRA_FRAME_INFO is specifically mentioned in the
> description of how to multi-arch a target.

I see.  (In what I'm about to say, I don't want you, Jason, to construe
anything I say as a criticism of your work.)

I think we need to be careful about what we declare to be "obvious".
The MAINTAINERS file says:

    An "obvious fix" means that there is no possibility that anyone will
    disagree with the change.

I agree with this definition.  I also agree that mechanical changes --
so long as the nature of the change is agreed upon in advance -- ought
to be considered as obvious.  The problem is that, on the ARM anyway,
the removal of EXTRA_FRAME_INFO was not entirely mechanical.  And it
was precisely these non-mechanical changes that raised a red flag with
both Richard and Andrew.  E.g, see

    http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb-patches/2002-01/msg00340.html
    http://sources.redhat.com/ml/gdb-patches/2002-01/msg00348.html

Now it turns out (I think) that my changes were okay.  But, the fact
that two people chose to comment on certain aspects of my patch
suggests to me that it should be considered non-obvious.

Kevin