Gale Andrews wrote:
I can't see any obvious place to share code than here. You can attach a file with .patch extension up to 1 MB - should be enough?
To paraphrase the immortal words of Bill Gates -- "1 MB should be enough!" I am a firm believer in doing things in small steps and testing rigorously.
Gale Andrews wrote:
Where is the thread about having a "trusted" Audacity community member review code changes and compile executables?
Mea culpa, that was in a private message I sent to Steve. The interface for PMs is so identical to a post on the forum that I had confused the two. Well maybe not, it is not in my “Sent” folder, ah, here it is:
http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic ... ed#p101311
Edgar wrote:
For anyone who compiles Audacity this is a very simple addition to install -- with or without using a patch (patches rapidly get stale), that is why I presented the code in the thread. For those folks who do not compile I could probably post the executable for download. Unfortunately, this requires trust on the part of the folks who download the executable. It might be nice if we had some form of "vetted" repository for executables-- the code would be reviewed then compiled by a "trusted" member of the Audacity community. I would not want this to get out of hand -- we would not want to hijack Audacity! This would be more on the order of allowing testing of those hobbyist Audacity programmers' offerings.
Gale Andrews wrote:What enhancements are your changes directed to, and is there anything in existing P3 bugs or even below where you feel you could provide a patch? I know you have some reservations about providing patches and their being modified / delayed before being committed but I'd hope some of your changes are things that could be considered for committal. Obviously since I'm no more than a cut-and-paste programmer (if that), I can only recommend/lobby for changes that I think are useful.
After a stable release I will talk about enhancements.
I think I will stay out of the deep end – supplying bug patches was a less than pleasant experience. Just as an example, I was working on one P3 for which I could see the problem but the code was so abstruse I was having a very hard time understanding it. I posted numerous messages to –devel and got a lot of comments which boiled down to “figure it out for yourself, we're not here to teach you the Audacity code base “. After about three weeks of work (many hours each day ) I finally got it “fixed” – the bug was gone . I posted the patch ; the developer who was primarily responsible for that code (one of the ones saying “figure it out for yourself…” ) , took my patch, modified it , thereby making the fix much simpler and applied it . He could easily have produced the modified code in just a few minutes if he had been willing to answer my questions in the first place by looking at the problem code which I had identified. Instead, I ended up spinning my wheels literally for weeks .
I can understand this attitude if I were supplying code for very obscure feature enhancements; but when I am trying hard to fix bugs which are in the bug database (and at that time I had a track record of some modest success ), that attitude seriously discouraged me from trying to be a “team” player . This exact same thing happened on at least three occasions. I have absolutely no problem with my submissions being modified, and I would not be concerned if I were never given any credit (and that is not a problem because any time anyone has modified any of my patches they have said so in the commit description). What I really have a problem with is that the Developers seem very reluctant to communicate – at least in public, and especially with newcomers.
I also have a problem with the perceived lack of progress being made by the Developers. I started working with the Audacity code base over a year ago; at that time the program had been in “feature freeze” for some time (I know not how long) due to the anticipated imminent release of the “stable” version. At that time there were only a few bugs blocking that release; it is my perception that two or three of these bugs have been “fixed” (removed from active status) and three or four have been added (or promoted).
In the year that I have been following the Audacity code I have seen one programmer promoted to Developer. I have not seen any newcomers welcomed aboard. In fact, I’ve seen a number of newcomers leave in discouragement.
This has gotten ridiculously long, there’s no possible excuse for your devoting as much time as it must have taken for you to read this to this topic! Sorry!! I will get off my high horse now and go back to editing audio – I have over 800 hours of raw audio to edit.
