Hi Justin, Thanks for the comments. One particular question/comment at this time:
On Sat, Mar 30, 2019 at 2:43 AM Justin Mclean <jus...@classsoftware.com> wrote: > - There are a number (100’s) of source files that do not have ASF headers, > Please run rat and please add headers to .java, .jsp and .php files that > are missing the ASF headers. > I assume we are taking about files like: https://github.com/apache/incubator-netbeans/blob/master/java/java.hints/test/unit/data/org/netbeans/test/java/hints/AddCast1.java As this is an IDE, many features manipulate source code. And tests for the features that manipulate have source code as an input. And input files for these tests so resemble source code. There is this policy: http://www.apache.org/legal/src-headers.html#faq-exceptions Which says: --- Test data for which the addition of a source header would cause the tests to fail. --- If I add the license header to the file above, there is a test somewhere that will start to fail, so it seems this fits this exception. Or if it does not, why not? Frankly, if we were talking about a "handful" of tests, I wouldn't worry about doing changes. But, a) we are probably talking about tens of thousands of tests; b) I am really worried about tests that will not fail after the header is added, but will not longer test the erroneous condition they should be testing (i.e. "silent failure"), as only manual inspection can detect these; c) I am worried that if the ASF header will ever change, we will face test breakages again (for tens of thousands of tests). Of course there are tricks that are being played for new tests to avoid this, but here we are in some cases talking about tests that are more than a decade old. (There are even tricks that could be played for existing test (data files), but none of them really nice, and all of them having their own issues.) Thanks, Jan
