Re: certain property names cause non-wf XML responses

On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 02:28:23PM -0500, kfogel@collab.net wrote:
> Here's why I'm worried:
>
> Aren't we also depending on Subversion's XML parser remaining loose
> for the rest of the 1.x line, when in fact that would be hard for us
> to guarantee that it remain that loose -- because it comes from an
> external library that we might want to upgrade for other reasons?
>
> Thus the issue is that even Subversion isn't safe for these properties
> in the long term. That's why I think this issue is important now.

Yes that's true, which is part of the reason I suggested that we
discourage their use. I'm adopting Greg Hudson's attitude on issues
like this. Let's worry about it when we go down that road.

If we fix it now we know we'll be creating inconvience for people to
save them from a potential inconvience later, which may never happen.

I think it's going to be hard to explain to users why we're breaking
their apps (which we promised we wouldn't) when the reason we are giving
for doing it is to fix a bug that they're not experiencing any pain
from.

If at some point the XML parsers get stricter I imagine the following
will happen. A small group of people will be early adopters of the new
library versions. We tell them to revert to a previous version for the
time being. We take the painful option of breaking compatability at the
next minor release, which we'll probably move up to release ASAP to deal
with this.

My biggest priority is trying to keep this bug out of peoples faces. At
this point it's a correctness issue. If and when my workaround fails to
hold I'll support any compatability breaks needed to fix the problem.

-- 
Ben Reser <ben@reser.org>
http://ben.reser.org
"Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking."
- H.L. Mencken
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