At 10:23 15/09/2005, Leigh Makewell wrote:
Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
Well, that is the point, it didn't actually work. Code similar to this
caused memory corruption. So while you may not have seen an instant
crash, over time and in certain conditions you would get unexplained
crashes. In order to fix this bug we needed to check for this sort of
code and in doing so we were able to fix it and also enhance the warning
levels to let people detect this sort of potentially bogus code.
-Rasmus
You don't seem to understand. I'll let you in on a secret. We don't care
about the php engine and how it works. What we care about is the PHP code
and whether that works. Like it or not you set a precedent. You allowed us
to write code that worked. Maybe it didn't work 100% and occasionally
caused a crash, but that doesn't change the fact it worked. It must of
worked otherwise people wouldn't of written it that way.
The fact that there was some memory corruption occuring occasionally is a
bug in *your* system. We don't care why it happens, or what is causing it.
All we do care about is that it gets fixed.
You have now demonstrated to us that the PHP developers can't be bothered
trying to find a real solution so you decided to pass the buck and make
us, your users, fix it for you. That is why we are angry. How do we know
this won't happen again? What happens next time you find a bug that is
just too hard? Will we have to change our code on every version release?
How much is that going to cost us in time and money, and why should we bother?
Leigh,
Let me let you in on a secret as well. This tone isn't going to get you
anywhere.
For the record, I was against fixing this issue in the 4.x branch, both
because of binary compatibility breakage and because of the mess it's
likely to create. That said, it's not one of the cases where I followed my
position all the way through, because the opposite opinion had quite enough
weight behind it too.
I don't particularly like the "Not Our Problem" attitude of some of the PHP
developers any more than you do. However, you essentially argue the same
thing exactly, so I don't find it very easy to sympathize with you, either.
The question of whether or not we should fix a problem that *definitely*
causes memory corruption in certain situations, but that's likely to break
applications that relied on this behavior, is not a very easy one. But
deciding in favour of fixing the corruption is definitely not an
out-of-the-question choice. It's all fine and dandy that your apps lived
nicely with this corruption, and may have even relied on it - the same
exact behavior may have crashed someone else's site. Weighing one bad
option against the other, this option made more sense to us.
Zeev
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