On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:06:03 -0700, Micah Cowan <[email protected]> wrote:
bringing it back to the list ... > You seem to think that I am angry or upset with you (or others) for some No, that just proves *I* sounded too harsch. > reason. This is not so. And especially not for providing valuable > feedback, for which I (and Giuseppe, I'm sure) am truly grateful. > > The only thing I was taking issue to was your subject heading, "Support > of non-linux OS's going down the drain?", because I think it's a bit > unfair to judge support for OSses that are hard for us to test, and that > no one wants to test during development. That might have been influenced by very recent experiences in many other projects that seems to prove that especially *young* (but enthusiastic) programmers forget that OS's other than Linux might not have available what their favourite Linux distro has available by default. A new dependency is very very costly. > Neither am I "upset" that no one tests the alpha tarball packages, as > seems to be your impression. I'm just pointing out that, since no one > does, the "testing" then must happen after release, and so there's > normally a series of patch releases following shortly afterwards, to > improve support for less often-tested OSes. This has been true for every > recent major release, as far as I can tell. It doesn't mean that support > for other OSses has gone down the drain; just means it needs a little > time to catch up. Ah right. There I indeed misinterpreted your original reply. > Thanks for your help, and please do keep doing your part to help improve > wget. > > -mjc > > On 08/19/2011 11:38 AM, H.Merijn Brand wrote: > > On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:48:12 -0700, Micah Cowan<[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > >> On 08/19/2011 12:18 AM, H.Merijn Brand wrote: > >> > >>> With HP-UX 11.00 and HP C-ANSI-C it doesn't even *compile* anymore! > >> > >> (Re "Support of non-linux OS's going down the drain?") > > > > I fully understand below statement, but I do not feel "guilty". > > > > I am close to full-time perl-tester. I invented the core-smoking > > process, that helps the perl5 development team to acquire test results > > for most architectures and operating systems without the testers > > actually being involved (though most testers actually get involved or > > get more interested than originally planned, which is a good thing). > > > > Our test bed runs on AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Windows and even OpenVMS and > > gives us a day-to-day overview of what patches break what. > > > > Note however that there are many many opensource projects, and that > > none of us have enough CPU cycles available to test more than one or > > two projects actively. I'm a perl5 committer, which makes me someone > > dedicated to perl5, but with a very clear and open view to problems > > other projects have on less active or available OS versions. > > > > That said, I will always feedback the problems and sometimes the > > solutions that I encounter in other projects. I'll give some example > > from the very recent past that took quite a bit of my precious free > > time. > > > > 1. Together with someone from the GNU gcc team we tracked down a bug > > in the assembler part of gcc itself that caused gcc to not only > > generate invalid assembly, but eventually caused gcc itself to > > crash in certain C code. Now fixed, will be part of gcc-4.6.2 > > > > 2. SQLite code would not compile on HP-UX 11.00 and older under > > certain conditions. Together with some others, we analyzed the > > problem and found a fix > > > > 3. I gave a patch to the authors of ccache to enable running on both > > HP-UX and AIX. > > > > 4. I implemented (longer ago now) a way to allow grep to use PCRE in > > regular expressions. That is now - heavily changed - available as > > -P option > > > > 5. I helped implementing PCRE patterns in 'less' search algorithms > > > > 6. I gave a lot of feedback to the people that create and maintain git. > > It now runs out of the box on most HP-UX. > > > > These are all actions done together with others in tight cooperation. > > Feedback is vital. > > > > I might be the last one on this planet to still have *recent* > > opensource projects as prebuilt binary software depots available for > > most versions of HP-UX that are abandoned by HP. If I look at the > > amount of downloads for e.g. HP-UX 10.20, which I consider long dead, > > I see a proof that we -as open software community - make an awful lot > > of people very very happy. > > > > Help comes in grades. Feedback is one form of them. I certainly feel > > your angry when you say that "others" (including me) did not test > > pre-releases or test releases. I however just don't have the time to > > test each and every opensource project I ever use *for every release*. > > > > I mean, I just use wget. I used version 1.10/1 for a long time, until I > > ran into a problem. A new version is available, and I download it, run > > the documented build process (configuration, make, make test, make > > install) for those projects, and I report back what I find. If theere > > is an easy fix, I'll add that in my feedback. > > > > I am not trying to criticize anyone either. I'm just trying to explain > > that your problems are others problems too and that tuits are not free. > > One needs a serious amount of motivation to actively participate in > > improving open source. I try to take part in that process, but my time > > and motivation is also limited. I also realize that most motivated > > developers are NOT on devious OS's like Solaris, AIX, HP-UX or (Open)VMS > > > >> If folks would like to see better support for non-GNU/Linux platforms, > >> then folks using those platforms might do well to help test the software > >> when test tarballs are released. There is one primary developer, and a > >> smattering of sporadic contributors, and every time a release is made, > >> the maintainer is always dismayed to find that all of a sudden people > >> find all their particular platform bugs at that time. > >> > >> No one ever seems to pay much attention to the test packages that people > >> make available, sometimes several months in advance, and the maintainer > >> surely lacks the resources to test on many different platforms > >> (particularly ones that don't lend themselves well to being run under a > >> VM), so I'm afraid there's little that can be done about the problem. It > >> wouldn't be appropriate to announce test source packages to as wide an > >> audience as we do for full releases, and obviously the maintainer's own > >> development platform (and whatever's most widely used among the mailing > >> list users) will get the best treatment. > >> > >> (Not trying to criticize anyone or anything, just trying to make the > >> point that the "favored" status of one particular OS is more or less > >> inevitable.) -- H.Merijn Brand http://tux.nl Perl Monger http://amsterdam.pm.org/ using 5.00307 through 5.14 and porting perl5.15.x on HP-UX 10.20, 11.00, 11.11, 11.23 and 11.31, OpenSuSE 10.1, 11.0 .. 11.4 and AIX 5.2 and 5.3. http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/ http://www.test-smoke.org/ http://qa.perl.org http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
