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Re: you're going to kill me, but... [Re: svn commit: r31625 - branches/1.5.x]

From: Mark Phippard <markphip_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 11:24:42 -0400

On Sun, Jun 8, 2008 at 2:11 AM, David Glasser <glasser_at_davidglasser.net> wrote:

> Um, I really don't want to drag this process out any longer. But as
> far as I can tell, without backporting these revisions, every single
> program written against the svn_repos API before 1.5.x (ie, the API
> which does not include svn_repos_set_repos_capabilities) which tries
> to commit anything to a repository with a start-commit hook will
> dereference NULL (ie, crash) every time.
>
> Please please please somebody convince me that I am wrong in that
> conclusion above. Because if we actually claim to care about API
> users, that's pretty serious.

That seems like a "loaded" way to phrase the problem. If we didn't
care about API users we wouldn't fix the bugs in the first place, or
be willing to backport them. Obviously we care. We have several bugs
that have been in the product since 1.0 that make Subversion all but
impossible to use for certain classes of OSX users. Does that mean we
do not care about OSX users? Actually, we have been accused of that
before, but I do not think it is true. All software has bugs but if
you never release you might as well not exist.

I have had several fellow committers take indirect swipes at me on IRC
or in this list. Saying that I do not understand what a release
candidate means etc. It is pretty clear to me though, that if we were
not going through this process and "threatening" to release then the
software would never get tested. The last few bugs reported make that
clear. This bug in particular has been sitting in the code since
November 2007. I am assuming this bug impacts SVK, since clkao
reported it and I have seen some other talk of segfaults from SVK
users. Does this mean that no one has tried SVK with 1.5 code until
the last week? If that is true, are we saying they cannot wait until
1.5.1? I've been testing the Java API daily since last summer.

Anyway, I am not against rolling another RC. I understand the
motivation for wanting to do so. I just do not agree with the general
notion that just because we find a bug in the API we have to pull the
emergency brake or it means we do not care. We have no problem making
the 99+% of our users that will not be impacted by any of these bugs
continue to wait for 1.5 (which includes a hell of a lot of bug fixes
by the way). But the very small number of users that are impacted by
these bugs cannot wait for a 1.5.1 (assuming they cannot apply the
patch or move to the new 1.5 API)?

I do not want to sidetrack the discussion and further delay the
release. We might as well roll rc10 once the fix is backported (and
possibly the other one Stefan Sperling mentioned) and we can start
talking about 1.5.0-final again in a week when Hyrum returns from
whatever he is doing.

-- 
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/
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Received on 2008-06-08 17:24:57 CEST

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