Re: [PATCH] ecpg: fix progname memory leak

On Fri, Oct 9, 2020 at 4:47 AM Daniel Gustafsson <daniel(at)yesql(dot)se> wrote:

> Now, I don't actually suggest we *remove* it, as there is valuable curated
> content, but that we rename it to something which won't encourage
> newcomers to
> pick something from the list simply because it exists. The name "TODO"
> implies
> that the list is something which it isn't.

+1

The name is very much at odds with the content. To pick one baffling
example, there's an entry under Free Space Map that dates to before the
on-disk FSM was invented. A more accurate, if not charitable, description
is "archive of stalled discussions". This is just a side effect of
non-controversial todos getting finished over time. That could be helped
with a round of aggressive culling.

Also, it's organized by functionality, which makes sense in a way, but I
don't find very useful in this context. Better categories might be

help-wanted,
good-first-issue (I know this is a tough one),
feature-request,
won't-fix (The memory leaks under discussion go here, it seems),
code-cleanup,
research-project,
documentation,
performance,
user-experience,
sql-standard
etc.

I suspect we will eventually want something like a full-blown issue
tracker, although I gather that's been rejected previously. But a wiki
page is not really suited for this.

I've found that a better source of actual "todo"s from developers can be
found in some commit messages, by grepping for "left for future work" or
"for another day". I've gotten patch ideas (and more than one committed)
from these. If I were asked, that's where I'd point aspiring developers.

--
John Naylor
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company