[llvm-dev] Email list just for front end developers?

[Sanjoy Das via llvm-dev]

Hi Perry,

On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 1:15 PM, Perry E. Metzger <perry at piermont.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 6 May 2017 12:06:03 -0700 Sanjoy Das
> <sanjoy at playingwithpointers.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Sat, May 6, 2017 at 11:31 AM, Perry E. Metzger via llvm-dev
>> <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>> > It makes sense to have a place for us to talk to each other where
>> > we're the dominant traffic, where our questions for each other
>> > aren't concealed amidst a very large amount of traffic on Clang's
>> > internals (or the rest of LLVM's), and where and our questions
>> > unrelated to local concerns are not viewed as an annoyance.
>>
>> Why not just filter traffic on llvm-dev with "emails that haven't
>> been replied to within a week"?  Right now llvm-dev is, say, ~220
>> emails a week, so after that filter you should a small enough set
>> of threads left which you can manually inspect.
>
> I'm not sure that will work well, because people won't usually wait a
> week to get their questions before moving on. If you're actively
> working full time on a project, you probably want answers in much less
> time.

Sure s/week/day/ then. :)  You're also welcome to be more active on
the existing IRC channel.

>> I don't think people will be annoyed by frontend specific questions
>> on llvm-dev unless there is a very high number of them (unlikely),
>> at which point we can //maybe// consider splitting out a new
>> mailing list (but see below).
>
> So you get a dual problem either here or on the cfe lists, which is
> that the normal traffic isn't traffic you understand (or care about)
> and that the traffic that you are interested in isn't of much interest
> to the overwhelming bulk of the list.

I don't think the latter is a problem.  Despite being an active user
of LLVM, I also don't care about a non-trivial fraction of the threads
on llvm-dev.  A few more won't hurt.

> But again, that said, if people really think that this is the right
> place for such things and not a new list, that can probably be given a
> good faith effort. My perception was that it probably wouldn't work
> well because this list is de facto for something else, but I'm willing
> to try if that's a strong consensus.

Let me put it this way -- I'm pretty sure if you take it on yourself
to answer beginner questions on llvm-dev promptly, nobody will
*complain*.  In fact, you're going to make some folks happy. :)

> *That* said, I still think a Wiki would also be nice. When one finds a
> hard-fought answer to a question, putting that answer somewhere beats
> having the information only in people's heads. Yes, for sure, the
> "right thing" is to submit a documentation patch, but there's a high
> barrier involved for an outsider to do that, and putting the
> information somewhere is better than having it nowhere. The only real
> problem with a Wiki is it requires policing, they acquire spam at a
> prodigious rate.

I think a policed wiki is going to be more cumbersome than checked in
documentation.  Moreover, we already have precedent here:
http://llvm.org/docs/Frontend/PerformanceTips.html.

-- Sanjoy