These are very valid and helpful points. I wasn't even aware of
"platform-testers".
Thanks to Ruth for reporting this problem and thanks to everyone
else for diagnosing it.
J'
On Fri, Aug 28, 2020 at 06:20:26PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
The PSPP folks did not make an announcement on the platform-testers
mailing list. Cf.,
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/platform-testers/. Pre-release
testing may have identified the issue before release.
Maybe the GNU Coding Standards should (1) tell a maintainer to build a
release candidate before a release, and (2) make an announcement on
platform-testers . Currently neither platform-testers nor release
candidates are discussed in the manual. [1]
Solaris 11 testing may have caught the issue, but there's another
problem on Solaris:
checking whether makeinfo supports @clicksequence... yes
checking whether makeinfo generates broken DocBook XML... yes
checking for dot... no
./configure: line 16169: syntax error at line 16200: `newline'
unexpected
This particular [testing] problem is not limited to PSPP. Other
projects do the same, and they also find they have problems after a
release.
In the post-mortem analysis, this is a procedural problem in the
release process. The release process has gaps and needs a control to
contain the risk. In this case I think the control to place is:
document release candidate testing in the manual. That puts everyone
on the same page and ensures some coverage to catch some of these
problems.
Jeff
[1] https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html
