[llvm-dev] RFC: Contributing Bazel BUILD files in the "peripheral" support tier

Wed Dec 9 09:17:49 PST 2020

Mehdi, you are welcome to your opinion, just like I and the others.

Fwiw, I think there is daylight between the viewpoint that policies need to
be authoritative and the fact that the very first use of this policy
continues to be controversial in a way that would be good to settle -- both
on the technical and community merits (which are one and the same when it
comes to support costs).

Being perfectly honest, I wrote one of the emails that set us down that
policy path, and I felt that equating editor configs and build systems in a
similar fashion might have been just sightly too far (and relatedly, Renato
also admitted that he regretted listing specifics here). But as I
mentioned, I benefit from this being decided in favor of bazel, and I kept
silent on that feeling.

Now, in this thread, I find that others had the same concern and were also
silent (and felt that the policy may have been a backdoor to approve this
thing).

I still think it's the right thing overall, but build system proliferation
does, historically on many projects, induce creeping support needs. If we
had been able to converge on that point in an RFC, fine. But I'd far prefer
the use of a process to facilitate than a continuing discussion on a
fractious issue that has legitimate, continuing differences of opinion with
respect to the application of a brand new policy whose development was
co-mingled with this one.

Contrary to worrying about too much use of the pitch process, I think it is
incredibly valuable to use it when needed. Decision making processes help
people know that they have a place in the community, and judicious use of
them shows a willingness to engage to a resolution without needing to
one-person-army a force of resistance. Like everything, if later we find
that it is getting used too much or is causing harm, we fix it
incrementally then. For this issue, I think it would help.

On Wed, Dec 9, 2020, 8:46 AM Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com> wrote:

> Stella,
>
> I don't understand why this would be a deadlock here: the thread has been
> mostly centered around the fact of "having a pitch or not having a pitch",
> as well as a meta-point covered in the policy. Escalating to the “LLVM
> Proposal Process” (pitch) for these reasons sets a really bad precedent in
> my opinion. If you move into the “LLVM Proposal Process”, I'll insist that
> the pitch is clearly centered about the merits and technicality of this
> proposal itself and *not* about the meta-point that is explicitly covered
> by the policy. We shouldn't have to revisit the entire policy every time
> there is any addition to the project.
>
> --
> Mehdi
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 11:21 PM Stella Laurenzo via llvm-dev <
> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>
>> +1 to making this a pitch - This thread seems deadlocked to me (with
>> plenty of evidence that everyone is acting in what they see is in the best
>> interests of the community and having a legitimate disagreement). In my
>> experience, as well, when a discussion gets to this phase and there is
>> still a strong objection by one or two parties still willing to make it
>> (which can be exhausting to hold such lines), there are almost always more
>> people who share the viewpoint but don't want to get involved. Best to
>> follow a real process towards resolution when things get to that level. I
>> dislike discussions of attrition and would welcome a process for resolving
>> this one. We feel uncomfortably close to attempting to "get this through on
>> a technicality" (full disclosure: I would benefit from such an outcome),
>> and I don't think that would be a success -- it is alienating. We've got a
>> process for deciding such things. Let's use it and then live with the
>> outcome.
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 4:01 PM Geoffrey Martin-Noble via llvm-dev <
>> llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks everyone. I will move forward with a pitch as part of the
>>> proposal process.
>>>
>>> The reason I reopened this as an RFC was because I thought the more
>>> general questions should have been resolved as part of the discussion in
>>> Renato's support policy RFC and that therefore this would not necessarily
>>> be controversial to the point we couldn't resolve it as part of an RFC. (In
>>> particular, some people said their objections were resolved by the
>>> existence of an explicit policy). Apologies that that took this thread in a
>>> direction that lost focus.
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2020 at 12:40 PM Eric Christopher <echristo at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> +Geoffrey Martin-Noble <gcmn at google.com>  and +Tom Stellard
>>>> <tstellar at redhat.com>
>>>>
>>>> In my effort to smooth the process out here I spoke with Tom offline
>>>> and we've agreed that a pitch proposal seems to be the best way forward.
>>>> From our discussion I believe that he disagrees with adding unsupported
>>>> build systems to llvm and what methodology we should use to determine their
>>>> or similar multiple versions of functionality inclusion (please do correct
>>>> me if I'm wrong here). I think it makes sense to limit the discussion in
>>>> the pitch to adding unsupported build systems.
>>>>
>>>> My personal take on this and why I've been helping shepherd this along:
>>>>
>>>> I believe that we should be enabling other people to do work in llvm as
>>>> long as
>>>>
>>>>  a) it doesn't impact maintainability of the core system (open to
>>>> debate in some ways),
>>>>  b) they have a history/desire to be responsible maintainers, and
>>>>  c) it's easy enough to remove if it becomes an issue.
>>>>
>>>> and that doing this helps llvm be used more easily in other projects;
>>>> thus helping see it's inclusion in more projects, a goal of the project as
>>>> a whole.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks!
>>>>
>>>> -eric
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Dec 6, 2020 at 7:07 AM Renato Golin <rengolin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 6 Dec 2020 at 04:38, Mehdi AMINI <joker.eph at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> It isn't clear to me what makes you say that? You may not have been
>>>>>> involved with it and you may haven't been paying attention at the time, but
>>>>>> it seems unfair to claim that it didn't have scrutiny or it went in without
>>>>>> the usual proper consideration.
>>>>>> In particular it has been discussed on llvm-dev@ like any other
>>>>>> proposal, and the thread was pretty long:
>>>>>> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-dev/2018-October/127342.html ;
>>>>>> it also went further with a lightning talk **and** a round-table during a
>>>>>> llvm dev meeting.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry, scrutiny was the wrong word. I meant "trouble". This proposal
>>>>> seems to be having a lot of trouble that GN should have had too. The
>>>>> biggest push back is about adding new build systems, not Bazel versus GN
>>>>> versus CMake.
>>>>>
>>>>> There seems to be a conflict here about adding a secondary build
>>>>> system. The first could be always thought of as an exception, but the
>>>>> second looks very much like a pattern. The way I see it, from one side
>>>>> there's people worried about maintenance and proliferation of code that is
>>>>> not directly related to the LLVM project (like build systems, editor files,
>>>>> etc) and from the other side, there's people saying this has been happening
>>>>> for a long time.
>>>>>
>>>>> I tried to solve that by starting the support policy, but not with the
>>>>> intent to validate the inclusion of GN/Bazel, just to help the discussion
>>>>> move to a consensus. I regret having written GN and Bazel by name, which
>>>>> only now I realise they could be used as leverage for one side of the
>>>>> discussion. It was not my intention, and I don't think we should ignore the
>>>>> issues just because GN has been included already, either.
>>>>>
>>>>> My support for moving this to a document (not necessarily a proposal)
>>>>> is because for most of the original discussion around Bazel, throughout the
>>>>> discussion about the support policy and now the retake on Bazel's
>>>>> inclusions, Tom's points haven't been addressed completely. There seems to
>>>>> be more discussion around semantics, history and precedence than the actual
>>>>> technical details. I'm guilty of that, too, while trying to solve the
>>>>> conflict, and I apologise if the support policy has created more confusion
>>>>> than it solved.
>>>>>
>>>>> I think laying out the issues in a document and discussing the
>>>>> technical aspects over it would make things easier, not harder. If the
>>>>> support policy needs to be amended to clarify that, so be it. We need to
>>>>> document what happens and what we want to happen, not fix some version of
>>>>> the past as a golden standard for the future.
>>>>>
>>>>> But as I always say: whatever works. If you want to continue
>>>>> discussing in this thread, by all means, do go on.
>>>>>
>>>>> cheers,
>>>>> --renato
>>>>>
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