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Re: crash when fetching status

From: Folker Schamel <schamel23_at_spinor.com>
Date: 2004-11-04 15:19:12 CET

>>>I guess that would stop the crash, but is it just hiding the
>>>underlying, unknown, cause of the bug? Is parent_status getting set
>>>incorrectly?
>>
>>Please let's not get into the discussion again wheter a bug needs to
>>be fixed or not. I think you guys know my opinion about this: if
>>there's obviously a bug in the code, fix it. Even if you don't know
>>exactly what has to happen to trigger the bug - it's still a bug, and
>>in this case a crash.
>
>
> I'm not keen on fixes that don't have regression tests; I strongly
> dislike "fixes" for things that cannot be explained. How do you know
> that status produces the right output with your fix?

I'm a nobody regarding this project, but I cannot stop myself
from commenting it ;-)

I think Steve is right. Here are two bugs:

a) A roubustness bug in this particular function reported by Steve.
b) A unknown bug causing this particular condition triggering bug a).

If a customer has to jump out of a airplane because of an emergency
(bug a), but then his parachute fails to open (bug b),
then the first thing is to fix the parachute problem;
you don't wait until the airplane problem is understood and fixed.

Especially, as Steve already pointed out:
If svn status fails in Tortoise, this is worst case!
The parachute does not open - a part of Windows itself crashes!

If you worry about fixing a) makes it harder to understand b),
then there should be better ways to go.
E.g. adding a black-box to your airplane:
add asserts and tests at well-defined places etc.
To understand and fix a bug b), it is not good to rely
on another bug a) which accidently shows up
(but the relation to bug b is not known at all).

Just my 2 cents ;-)

Cheers,
Folker

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Received on Thu Nov 4 15:19:44 2004

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