Reports: Utilization of urls

[Geert Janssens]

On Thursday 10 March 2016 18:58:56 Carsten Rinke wrote:
> I have the same point of view regarding the categorization:
> This is adding an optional representation mode to existing reports.
> Not making up new reports.
> This option is available already for the networth line chart (even
> though differently implemented), so I rather see this a bug fix
> instead of a new feature.
> 
It's not a bug fix. The line chart views weren't there for these reports so you're not fixing 
something that didn't work properly. You're adding functionality that simply wasn't there yet. 
There's no use in trying to debate that.

Whether the new feature should be eligible for maint inclusion can be debatable. You'll find my 
motivation for not including it below.

> At the same time I see this a minor modification. So waiting 2 years
> to make this available for other users .... that is a looooong way.
> But it has happened before that I have underestimated the complexity
> of the issue ....
> 
It's not so much you underestimating the complexity of the issue. I agree that the change 
itself in this case looks relatively small.

The complexity comes from the state of the guile code as a whole in gnucash. There is 
insufficient isolation in many cases. As a result making a trivial change for one issue can easily 
break another part of the code without any of us realizing.

That's why I tend to be extremely conservative in making changes in guile code in the stable 
series. I have underestimated these inter dependencies more than once in the past (among 
others with several of your patches I did review and commit only to revert them afterwards 
again due to complications). In each of the cases I believed the change was sufficiently local to 
be ok and was wrong. I don't feel like repeating that exercise on a regular basis.

If others want to review your patches and estimate whether they are safe to include in maint, 
I'm fine with that. I will stick to my conservative selection of only applying patches to maint I 
have sufficient confidence in they won't break the code in unexpected ways.

Note I would feel much more confident if we had a good unit test set available for most of our 
guile modules, which we don't. If you feel like it that's a very good area to contribute in as well 
:)

Regards,

Geert