[m-dev.] Graphical debugger for Mercury

[Fergus Henderson]

Erwan Jahier <Erwan.Jahier at irisa.fr> sent me the following in
private email, but I thought my comments about quality standards
and the purpose of the extras distribution were probably of general interest,
so I'm sending a copy of my reply here.

> If you want to have a quick review of it so that every one could benefit from 
> your fruitfull comments, please tell me. Otherwise I will send the URL
> tonight (well in the morning for you).

I'll happily review it.  But I don't mind if you send the URL to the
mercury-developers list before or after.  That's up to you.

> I did not dare to send all that stuff to mercury-dev for review for several
> reasons:
> - too much XXX
> - I don't think my code fits with your high quality standard yet ;-)

Fair enough.

> - I am not part of the Melbource univ

This is not a good reason.  The Mercury distribution already includes
code from Mission Critical (Belgium) and IBM, amongst others.  Being a
part of Melb Uni shouldn't have anything to do with whether your code
is suitable for review on the mercury-developers mailing list or
inclusion in the Mercury distribution.  Code should be judged on its merits,
and sometimes on the license conditions, but not on its source of origin.

> However, I think it would be better if Opium-M could be included in your
> distribution (in the extras ?) in the long run;

Yes, I strongly agree.

If the Opium-M distribution is of sufficient quality that some people
might find it useful, then we should include it in the mercury-extras
distribution.

Note that the quality standard for stuff in the `extras' distribution
is deliberately lower than that for stuff in the main distribution.
The extras distribution is designed for stuff which is more
experimental/unstable/whatever, stuff which is less portable, stuff
which is less generally useful than would be appropriate for the
standard library, and/or stuff which has restrictive licensing
conditions -- in general, anything related to Mercury which it is useful
to distribute but which for one reason or other does not quite meet the
standards for the primary Mercury distribution.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.