Re: GNUstep ROADMAP

[David Ayers]

Richard Frith-Macdonald schrieb:

> I'm with Fred on this one ... certainly on partially implemented 
> classes, but also (though less strongly) on completely empty ones.
> I think there is absolutely zero risk of someone wasting loads of  time
> porting only to find something critical missing... as long as  our
> documentation does not tell lies (and little chance of it even  then).
> We do need to make sure that the documentation is up to date, so it 
> says which methods of which classes are unimplemented.
> 
> IMO partially implemented classes tell people that there is some hope 
> of the classes being done in future ... or at least that the GNUstep 
> project would look favourably upon people contributing in those  areas. 
> In fact it would probably be good if unimplemented methods  actually
> generated an NSLog  explicitly asking for an implementation  to be
> contributed.  Maybe I should add a macro to NSDebug.h to do that?
> 
> Having a completely unimplemented class there gives us a good 
> placeholder for the documentation that tells people that the class is 
> unimplemented, and maybe what the current plans are for it.  I can  see
> the argument here for removing the class (people aren't likely to  think
> the class exists if there is no trace of it), but I think that  a header
> file that's clearly a shell, and documentation that states  that the
> class is unimplemented, is equally clear.  We could document  such empty
> classes with a note to say that someone (or nobody) is  working on them,
> and a pointer to the task list on the website for  current status.

FWIW, I agree.

Cheers,
David