On 06/ 7/10 03:46 PM, Mike Witt wrote:
On 06/06/2010 10:43:38 PM, Rob Beezer wrote:
On Jun 6, 9:05 am, Mike Witt <msg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> This does kind of reinforce the concept, which I guess I've
> heard expressed before here, that you have to be prepared
> to update your sage build very frequently in order to keep
> up with things.
Exactly. ;-) But with
sage -upgrade
at a system prompt, it couldn't be much easier.
Rob
That's fine if sage -upgrade works for you, but for a small, but significant
number of people, it breaks their Sage installation.
Well, getting a new version is no problem (assuming it builds on one's
system). But since there is no distinction between "bug fix" releases
and releases in which the interface to some function might change (such as
the change we were just discussing) you never know when downloading a
new version is going to cause you some work figuring out how to update
existing code.
I would very much like to see stable and bugfix releases as separate, but I have
come to the conclusion I am hitting my head against the wall in wanting this.
Robert Bradshaw is one other developer who has expressed broadly similar views.
There are probably others too, though I can't recall their names.
But there seems to be a lot of people against this, who feel their patches
should be in Sage asap. Personally, I don't see why they should worry if they
are in a beta release, but for some this is not enough.
Again, I may be an atypical user. I like to have a stable system. I only
install every *other* fedora release :-)
You are far from atypical in not always wanting to have the latest version. I
grew out of the "I must have the latest copy" about 15 years ago!
I have the distinct impression that most of the people here are active
developers, who spend time every day reading the mailing lists, looking
at the code, and keeping track of the status of bugs, etc.
I don't know to what extent that is true. Clearly some do. But then there are
others that do not. There are certainly users who are not developers. Whilst I'm
sure it would be nice if more users contributed to Sage, there is actually an
advantage in having a group that do not. Developers get to know what that group
wants.
I'm actually
the guy who is trying to use Sage as "a viable free open source alternative
to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab" :-)
It is hard to see how Sage will be viable when the frequency of updates is like
it is. Mathematica is not bug-less, but if I update from 7.0 to 7.0.1, it is
most unlikely I will find a new bug.
Of course, it is generally accepted that for non-trivial pieces of software,
there is a lower limit on the number of bugs. Ultimately you reach the point
where trying to fix bugs increases them at the same rate.
But, note that I'm not asking for my money back ...
-Mike
I don't think anyone would mind refunding you the purchase price!
Dave
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