| Re: [eigen] random thoughts -- we need more Gaels |
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To chime in...
On 3. Oct, 2010, at 16:22 , Benoit Jacob wrote:
> 2010/10/3 Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> Cyrille isn't the only one affectd by this problem. Countless others, just
>> like Cyrille, have looked into this project's code with the intention to
>> contribute fixes and/or implement new features. Unfortunately, as this project
>> is terribly developer-unfriendly,
>
> you can't call Eigen terribly developer-unfriendly, that's not fair.
I agree with you there.
> It just requires both good c++ templates skills and good math skills,
> which makes a high barried to entry. We need to alleviate this with
> more developer documentation. But eigen has good user-level
> documentation, clean code (for those who understand this kind of c++
> patterns), a simple and well documented build system / test framework,
> and very accessible developers. The only thing it lacks is
> developer-oriented docs, many free software projects are farther away
> from being developer-friendly.
Yes, many of them are much worse. But then, most of them don't make extensive use of expression templates... ;-) I'd bet that 99% of the potential contributors don't have the slightest of ideas how that magic works and there is very little accessible documentation on this kind of programming idiom.
>
> Though the other big issue we had was organizational, and we're fixing
> this by moving probably to bugzilla.
Although I applaud the move to a "serious bugtracker", personally I loathe bugzilla (e.g. it's way too complicated to file a bug), but then I don't like any of the other popular bug trackers out there much better. If I'd have to pick one it would be Mantis, but that one doesn't do patch tracking, just simple attachments.
Michael
--
There is always a well-known solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken