{"id":1140,"date":"2015-08-19T18:57:37","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T01:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/galencharlton.com\/blog\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2015-08-19T18:57:37","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T01:57:37","slug":"evergreen-2-9-now-with-fewer-zombies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/galencharlton.com\/blog\/2015\/08\/evergreen-2-9-now-with-fewer-zombies\/","title":{"rendered":"Evergreen 2.9: now with fewer zombies"},"content":{"rendered":"

While looking to see what made it into the upcoming 2.9 beta release of Evergreen, I had a suspicion that something unprecedented had happened. I ran some numbers, and it turns out I was right.<\/p>\n

Evergreen 2.9 will feature fewer zombies.<\/p>\n

Considering that I’m sitting in a hotel room taking a break from Sasquan, the 2015 World Science Fiction Convention, zombies may be an appropriate theme.<\/p>\n

But to put it more mundanely, and to reveal the unprecedented bit: more files were deleted in the course of developing Evergreen 2.9 (as compared to the previous stable version) than entirely new files were added.<\/p>\n

To reiterate: Evergreen 2.9 will ship with fewer<\/i> files, even though it includes numerous improvements, including a big chunk of the cataloging section of the web staff client.<\/p>\n

Here’s a table counting the number of new files, deleted files, and files that were renamed or moved from the last release in a stable series to the first release in the next series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/colgroup>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Between release…<\/strong><\/td>\n… and release<\/b><\/td>\nEntirely new files<\/strong><\/td>\nFiles deleted<\/strong><\/td>\nFiles renamed<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_1_6_2_3<\/td>\nrel_2_0_0<\/td>\n1159<\/td>\n75<\/td>\n145<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_0_12<\/td>\nrel_2_1_0<\/td>\n201<\/td>\n75<\/td>\n176<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_1_6<\/td>\nrel_2_2_0<\/td>\n519<\/td>\n61<\/td>\n120<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_2_9<\/td>\nrel_2_3_0<\/td>\n215<\/td>\n137<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_3_12<\/td>\nrel_2_4_0<\/td>\n125<\/td>\n30<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_4_6<\/td>\nrel_2_5_0<\/td>\n143<\/td>\n14<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_5_9<\/td>\nrel_2_6_0<\/td>\n83<\/td>\n31<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_6_7<\/td>\nrel_2_7_0<\/td>\n239<\/td>\n51<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_7_7<\/td>\nrel_2_8_0<\/td>\n84<\/td>\n30<\/td>\n15<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
rel_2_8_2<\/td>\nmaster<\/td>\n99<\/td>\n277<\/strong><\/span><\/td>\n0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The counts were made using git diff --summary --find-rename FROM<\/em>..TO<\/em> | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c<\/code> and ignoring file mode changes. For example, to get the counts between release 2.8.2 and the master branch as of this post, I did:<\/p>\n

\r\n$ git diff --summary  --find-renames origin\/tags\/rel_2_8_2..master|awk '{print $1}'|sort|uniq -c\r\n     99 create\r\n    277 delete\r\n      1 mode\r\n<\/pre>\n
Why am I so excited about this? It means that we’ve made significant progress in getting rid of old code that used to serve a purpose, but no longer does.  Dead code may not seem so bad — it just sits there, right? — but like a zombie, it has a way of going after developers’ brains.  Want to add a feature or fix a bug?  Zombies in the code base can sometimes look like they’re still alive — but time spent fixing bugs in dead code is, of course, wasted.  For that matter, time spent double-checking whether a section of code is a zombie or not is time wasted.<\/p>\n
Best for the zombies to go away — and kudos to Bill Erickson, Jeff Godin, and Jason Stephenson in particular for removing the remnants of Craftsman, script-based circulation rules, and JSPac from Evergreen 2.9.<\/p>\n
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