Re: CALL TO COMMITTERS! HELPING WITH SPL REMOVAL!

[Paul Allen <pallen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I don't have a problem with replacing critical short usage areas with
> critical sections, but flatting it directly is not good.
> 
> Joerg

I think Matt has a way of running faster than people like
(by his own admission, see below).  I'm sure he'll do
whatever is necessary after the fact to ameliorate any too
horrendous consequences.

Matt Dillon said on January 2nd, 2002:
. ..
> This work eventually led to my getting what we call 'the
> commit bit', which allowed me to commit directly to the 
> FreeBSD CVS tree. With this bit in hand I decided to 'fix' 
> the VM system (by rewriting half of it), which turned me 
> into a Terror from the point of view of some of the old-boys 
> in the tree who became alarmed at the rate I began committing
> changes. I think part of it was simply that many of them didn't
> understand the VM system and therefore didn't understand what I 
> was doing, but since they weren't really interested in fixing
> the VM system themselves and I was getting massive support from 
> the end-user community, they didn't have much of a choice. This 
> was a time when the VM system had a huge vacuum due to the 
> departure of John Dyson.  The only other person doing significant 
> work on it was David Greenman, and he was already burning out 
> after making hundreds of changes to John's in-progress work in 
> order to get the system to not crash. These were the days of 
> 2.2.X.

> This led to an overreaction by core which (by my account anyway)
> led to some rather draconian rules in an attempt to slow me down?
> I dunno, I'm sure others have a completely different viewpoint.
> Suffice it to say that there was a lot of friction during this 
> time and I even lost my commit bit for a number of months due to
> it.  It didn't stick, of course, it just made DG's job harder
> because now he or Alan Cox (not the Linux Alan Cox, our Alan Cox) 
> had to commit my submissions themselves and I was still fixing bugs 
> at an insane rate. Eventually my work proved out both in later 3.x
> releases and in the FreeBSD-4.0 release, and I became known as one 
> of the VM Gurus.