Re: Formatting Curmudgeons WAS: MMAP Buffers

On 10.05.2011 04:43, Greg Smith wrote:
> Josh Berkus wrote:
>> As I don't think we can change this, I think the best answer is to
>> tell people
>> "Don't submit a big patch to PostgreSQL until you've done a few small
>> patches first. You'll regret it".
>
> When I last did a talk about getting started writing patches, I had a
> few people ask me afterwards if I'd ever run into problems with having
> patch submissions rejected. I said I hadn't. When asked what my secret
> was, I told them my first serious submission modified exactly one line
> of code[1]. And *that* I had to defend in regards to its performance
> impact.[2]
>
> Anyway, I think the intro message should be "Don't submit a big patch to
> PostgreSQL until you've done a small patch and some patch review"
> instead though.

Well, my first patch was two-phase commit. And I had never even used 
PostgreSQL before I dived into the source tree and started to work on 
that. I did, however, lurk on the pgsql-hackers mailing list for a few 
months before posting, so I knew the social dynamics. I basically did 
exactly what Robert described elsewhere in this thread, and successfully 
avoided the culture shock.

--   Heikki Linnakangas  EnterpriseDB   http://www.enterprisedb.com