[openib-general] IB: I don't like what I'm seeing.

Thu Apr 1 00:24:39 PST 2004

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrey Slepuhin [mailto:andrey.slepuhin at t-platforms.ru]
> Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 12:13 AM
> 
> Ok, may be I didn't use an adequate word, I meant not architectural
> design but the design of a code tree. I randomly looked at some places
> in the code and they are not looking good to work with. A huge amount
of
> conditional compilation through all the code, unnecessary code
> duplication in some places, etc. Sometimes I was need to think some
> minutes to understand how the simple things are implemented. All this
is
> the source of possible bugs and makes very hard understanding and
> modifying the code. I will not point to the exact code fragments, it
> will be better if I'll send appropriate patches when SVN tree will be
> available :)

So are people generally just looking at the code without ever looking at
a design document that might explain why the code is structured the way
it is?  I don't mean to argue that design documents will explain bad
coding practices, but there seems to be an undue focus on the code
quality and seemingly no focus on the architecture quality.  IMO, a good
architecture should be a prerequisite to looking at code.

> 
> >
> > There seems to be a big push to hit the reset button on all these IB
> stacks
> > and start implementing something new.  Better in my mind would be to
> spend
> > some time figuring out the desired design tradeoffs, then picking
the
> stack
> > that's the closest (if there is one) and working from there.  Unless
we
> > spend some time on the design phase, no implementation has much of a
> hope of
> > being adequate.
> 
> Oh no, I'm not arguing to redesign all IB stack from scratch.

Others have made statements to that extent.  I wasn't directing my
comments at you specifically. :)

> I'm arguing to do a good code cleanup/audit.

Again, I think we're jumping the gun with code cleanup - the
architecture review was totally bypassed.

> Once more please do not blame on me

No blame here, just hoping to get people to look outside of the code for
a bit, and at the architecture of the different IB SW stacks.  They are
not all created equal - not from an implementation nor from an
architectural point of view.  As I stated before, it's easy to fix the
implementation.  It's harder to fix the architecture.

- Fab

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