[webkit-dev] arm jit

[Gavin Barraclough]

> And here, I have to make a short comment on the non-acceptance of  
> our ARM
> JIT implementation. In your mail you mention that you would remain
> reluctant to accept a duplicate of the JIT into the tree, rather  
> than a
> port of the existing JIT utilizing the MacroAssembler abstraction.  
> Well,
> did you check our ARM port? It has been rewritten to conform to the
> MacroAssembler interfaces more than a month ago and posted it into the
> bugzilla (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24986).

Hi Zoltan,

I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting you here, but it sounds like over the  
last month you have been expecting your MacroAssembler based ARM port  
to have been reviewed.  If so -

Then I can quite understand your frustration, and do sympathize  
greatly with you.  There clearly has been a breakdown in  
communication, and I'm sorry about your disappointment.  I'm afraid  
that we had no way of knowing that you considered your port to be  
complete.  Just last week, in an email on this list, I said, "when you  
have a patch ready for review, please attach it to the bug and set the  
review flag" – I was under the impression that you did not feel your  
changes were yet final (by the sound of it I was mistaken).  I was  
assuming that when a final patch was ready you would attach it to the  
bug, and mark it for review.

We have a procedure for accepting contributions to avoid exactly this  
kind of miscommunication.  The mechanism for communicating to us that  
you believe your patch is ready is very simple, and is absolutely  
critical if you want to get code into WebKit.  Patches ready for  
review must be marked as such in bugzilla.  Without this we cannot  
tell which patches attached to bugs are complete, and which represent  
work in progress.

I urge you to review the instructions on contributing on the website,  
since following these will be the only way to avoid similar  
disappointment in the future.  Perhaps this is an area where we need  
to improve our communication – perhaps we need to make these  
instructions clearer, or more prominent on the website.  The website  
is all stored in svn, so please do file bugs in bugzilla – or patches  
welcome – if you think these can be improved.

> Anyway, we have updated the MacroAssembler-based ARM port of ours,
> uploaded it to the bugzilla, and set the review flag on the patch.

I've had a brief chance to look at the patch, and it's looking really  
great.  There are some bits to clean up a little to get it through  
review, and we will want to land a change of this magnitude  
incrementally.  I'm afraid that I have a busy day today, I will try to  
comment on the bug tonight but it may have to wait until the morning.   
Hopefully we can get this landed into ToT fairly quickly.

cheers,
G.