Follow-up Comment #6, bug #64772 (project groff):
[comment #5 comment #5:]
> which implies his previously quoted characterization of the package as
"buggy as hell" is speculative based on code inspection, rather than empirical
based on testing.
Note that code review and black-box testing are both methodologies (among
others that are also useful, depending on the situation) that are actively
being used in the software industry for the purpose of quality assurance, and
i have done both in professional capacities (i.e. being paid for doing such
work). Obviously, all methodologies have their specific strengths and
weaknesses. For example, black box testing has the advantage of working even
without access to the source code, but comes at the price of being more
difficult and more time-consuming. Fuzzing has the advantage of reducing the
human working time needed, but at the price of only finding some types of
issues and finding bugs only in a random manner rather than systematically
per-feature. Human code review is much easier and faster than automated
testing, in particular for judging the overall code quality - admittedly, it
is hard to make sure that a review found *all* the problems, but that's not
the goal here.
I think calling code review "speculative" in this context - as if systematic
testing were somehow better - is not helpful. If you already know from code
review that code is of bad quality, starting a systematic testing effort would
be nothing but a waste of time, unless somebody is willing to invest the large
amount of time that is required for cleaning the code up.
When garbarge code is found in the tree and within three years, no one speaks
up who is using it and no one speak up who wants to repair it, how long do we
want to wait before throwing it out?
Isn't it a no-brainer that low-quality unmaintained code should be deleted?
I'd go as far as saying that should be done even if the code is used by a few
people and even if there is no replacement. If people want to use garbage
code on an individual basis, that is their individual problem, and they can
still do that if they really want to even after deletion because old versions
remain publicly available, but we should not promote garbage code and
encourage its use by redistributing it.
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