Re: branching 1.14.x

> On Mar 14, 2020, at 8:51 AM, Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 08:03:28AM -0400, Mark Phippard wrote:
>> Personally, I do not care at all about experimental features and shelving. I
>> would favor ripping it all out and let it come back in a future release if
>> someone wants to finish and turn it into a feature that we are willing to
>> support forever. Right now, I cannot foresee a scenario where this feature
>> ever becomes finished. I do not see why we are even doing the work to include
>> it. I realize ripping it out would be work that someone has to do too
>> though.
>
> I don't think asking "why are we even doing this" is helpful.

That is pretty unfair. I could go back to say nothing like most of the rest of us on this list and leave you all alone wondering why there is no response.

I did not question the work Julian did, I am reflecting the reality of the current situation. There is currently no path to finishing this feature. When you find yourself stuck in a hole it is best to quit digging. I know some work is being done to hide away the feature so that someone can compile it in. If that can be finished great. I am just saying if we cannot get that finished, then maybe it is time to delete it or at least have it not compiled in and let someone else deal with making it possible to compile it in later. We are holding up some actual value that people need (Python 3 support) so that maybe someday someone can come back and finish all of the hard work remaining on this shelving feature. If someone really wants to do that, it is going to require more new code to be written so I do not see why having the experimental feature in 1.14 really helps with that.

Anyway, I am just trying to suggest things to help us get unstuck.

>> I do not fully understand the editor path bug. But if you are saying it
>> cannot be fixed in an existing release because of API changes, then that
>> sounds like the priority. Unless Bert has time, I am not sure where we get
>> Windows help now though.
>
> As far as I understand, the problem is that people need to quote their
> editor commands in certain ways to prevent parts of filenames being
> interpreted as commands by the shell. This has security implications.
> See https://svn.apache.org/r1874057
>
> The editor command is part of the configuration file. We can't change the
> quoting rules in a patch release without breaking existing installations
> because, according to our compatibility guidelines, users should be able
> to switch freely between patch releases without having to change anything
> other than the set of binaries they are using.
>
> The open problem is that the new quoting code won't work on Windows, even
> though it is using an APR-provided function to sanitize the filename.
> From my point of view this is something that should be fixed in APR if
> possible.

OK, then let's just move past it and hope it gets fixed in APR? If no one raises their hand saying they are working on a fix, you should proceed as if we are never going to fix this in our product. Otherwise, we are just stuck here in limbo. Security bug or not, if no one is going to fix it then what is there to wait for?

>> Anyway, I have a small window here where I have been able to maybe get our
>> SVN support updated from 1.8 to a newer version. 1.14 is the only one I am
>> interested in, so I am hoping the release process starts soon.
>
> That is good news! Does this mean you might be able to get some people
> at CollabNet activated to look at some of the issues we still need to
> solve before 1.14 can be released?

"people" means Mike at best. He will probably be focused on getting stuff to work on Python 3 before we we need him again elsewhere and if the 1.14 release process does not happen soon then we will probably just have to put it all to the side again and hope another window opens up sometime in the future.

Mark
Received on 2020-03-14 14:25:32 CET