Take 2, with Reply All chewiness.... On Thu, 2009-07-09 at 17:11 -0700, David Brownell wrote: > On Wednesday 08 July 2009, Zach Welch wrote: > > Asking the users to test the SVN is asking > > them to do everything that a developer must do. > > Not "everything" by far! "configure; make; run".
Right... but it's bootstrap's autotools that are the real problem. The above steps are the easy part; bootstrapping is for developers only, and only required from the SVN repository. > > That is an unacceptable > > process for users, as it will result in more false reports from failed > > (re)building than it will help test the bug. > > Build bugs need fixing, regardless. Especially if "we" are > not in the support-binary-builds end of the business. > > But for the record ... standard process for bug reporters > in Linux most typically involves getting the submitter to > build *current* stuff to verify the bug still exists. If > the kernel isn't current, it's very likely that at least > some of the symptoms changed; maybe the bug is fully fixed! The contributor of a patch is acting as a developer, so they should be able to build it. I agree completely that developers should be testing and submitting patches against the trunk HEAD. > It's impractical to support users who are on code so old > the developers can't use it. At least, not without some > kind of paid support contract ... and at that point, it's > not the developers who are supporting the old code base. I agree, which is why need to find a balance between the forces of development, bug fixes, and frequent releases. Because there are active "users" and a lot of development remains to be done, we need to make releases frequently enough that they never feel tempted to use the SVN. > Plus ... this *is* open source. One of the strengths of > those processes is that they make it easy to morph from > user to developer, as the need arises. So IMO it's more > than counterproductive to draw a circle with "developers" > inside, and everyone else outside. Going back and forth > should be no big deal whatsoever. It should be *easy* to > contribute. If it seems hard ... that's worth fixing. I did make this point clearly. :) Labels are useless when you _can_ swap back and forth between using and developing the project. However, real "users" _can't_ do development, even if they can run build a source release using configure and make. It is _those_ individuals that should never be asked to build from the SVN repository. We have established that this community does have such individuals (via one or more vendor); those individuals can test a nightly build or wait for their distributor (i.e. a developer) to produce one for them with their fix using 'make dist'. Right? Cheers, Zach _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list Openocd-development@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
