elb explaining Adium #13920

Adium #13920 - elb

21:28:56 Rob: Do patches like this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pidgin/+bug/856631 get forwarded to the Pidgin project?
21:31:09 Ethan Blanton: no
21:31:12 Ethan Blanton: I've not seen that bug
21:31:15 Ethan Blanton: I'm aware of the problem
21:31:18 Ethan Blanton: Adium created it
21:31:35 datallah: the problem or the patch?
21:31:35 Ethan Blanton: along with the huge computational complexity problems in 2.9.0
21:31:35 Rob: Mm
21:31:43 Ethan Blanton: the problem
21:31:52 datallah: heh ok
21:31:54 Ethan Blanton: I really want to back that entire misbegotten affair out
21:31:59 Ethan Blanton: it's stupid and wrong
21:32:01 Rob: Oh dear
21:32:22 Ethan Blanton: staggering the WHOs would help the symptoms, but they don't really fix the problem
21:32:28 Ethan Blanton: which is that the operation is really expensive
21:33:09 Ethan Blanton: (to clarify, this is the exact same patch series, for the same feature, that caused the computational complexity problems in 2.9.0 -- they're not just two things which Adium happens to have created for us)
21:33:38 Rob: It is over my head.
21:34:11 Rob: What's keeping you from backing it out?
21:34:25 etan: pidgin is asking the server to "get info" on every user in every channel you are in every five minutes.
21:34:28 Ethan Blanton: energy
21:34:34 Ethan Blanton: basically, we periodically ask the IRC server to tell us some information about every user in a channel
21:34:34 Rob: Heh
21:34:39 Ethan Blanton: and we do that for every channel we're joined to
21:35:07 Rob: What was Zac's reasoning (he committed that stuff, right?)?
21:35:16 Ethan Blanton: he didn't htink about it, I assume
21:35:19 Rob: (Thanks, you two :) )
21:35:24 Ethan Blanton: because it's really a terrible idea
21:35:26 etan: Adium users like pretty "away" notification in the chatroom user list.
21:35:38 Ethan Blanton: and I had stated, publicly, on multiple occasions, that under no circumstances would we include it
21:35:40 Rob: Ah
21:35:48 Ethan Blanton: and given reasoning
21:36:05 Ethan Blanton: but ... I wasn't consulted, and it was applied to the adium branch of libpurple
21:36:12 Ethan Blanton: (fine, whatever, mac users are used to slow shitty programs)
21:36:27 Ethan Blanton: and then merged to libpurple proper, which was NOT ok, but again, I wasn't consulted
21:36:59 Ethan Blanton: backing it out will remove functionality
21:37:07 Ethan Blanton: which I anticipate causing a hullabaloo
21:37:26 Rob: Why would it?
21:37:28 Ethan Blanton: which I don't have the energy to deal with
21:37:51 etan: Does pidgin display the away status?
21:38:02 etan: I know we had a sorting bug related to it, but that's not quite what I mean.
21:38:03 etan: =)
21:38:05 Ethan Blanton: I think so
21:38:18 Ethan Blanton: Rob: because every change causes a big hullabaloo
21:38:41 Rob: Hm
21:38:50 Ethan Blanton: if Pidgin had a rendering glitch that caused part of a conversation window to be obscured by random pixels, and it persisted for several releases, then when we fixed it people would bitch
21:38:59 Ethan Blanton: and there would probably be a short-lived fork
21:39:09 Rob: :D
21:39:09 Ethan Blanton: and someone would write a plugin to obscure part of the window by random pixels
21:39:23 Ethan Blanton: and the bug tracker would fill up with demands for bringing the old behavior back
21:39:36 Rob: And you wouldn't give a shit, right?
21:39:38 Rob: :)
21:39:46 Ethan Blanton: and there would be an article on slashdot about how Pidgin devs are raging assholes for not providing users with what they want
21:40:31 etan: You know what you should do? Just yank the who sending bit, leave the rest. Let someone write a who injection plugin.
21:41:10 Ethan Blanton: yeah, tht's how I'd back it out, if I were to back it ou
21:41:23 Ethan Blanton: just remove the timer
21:47:48 Ethan Blanton: which is exactly what that patch does, looks like