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Re: Perl 5.10.1
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From:
chromatic
Date:
June 20, 2009 20:29
Subject:
Re: Perl 5.10.1
Message ID:
20090621014452.GA30217@wgz.org
It would be my pleasure to write a short note for the perldelta or
README or both to explain that the semantics of 5.10 and 5.10.1 smart
matching are changing in certain circumstances. Would that suffice to
notify reasonable people that Perl 5.10.1 does not further entrench
behavior already changed in bleadperl? (I don't care about unreasonable
people -- they're unpleasable.)
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 10:43:09PM +0100, Nicholas Clark wrote:
> However, in return, I'd like to point out that if the Perl community *had*
> tested 5.10 before release, they would have spotted this speed regression,
> so to some extent they are getting what they deserve.
Anyone who believes that release candidates get any sort of exhaustive
community testing is either dangeriously naive or hasn't paid attention
to the negligible amount of testing release candidates do get.
> (Again, if the Perl community had tested this in the *year or more* before
> blead became 5.10.0, it would have been spotted in time.)
I don't understand this argument. How is it okay for a pumpking to hold
back a release to punish the filthy proles who caught and fixed a
performance regression a couple of weeks on the wrong side of a release,
because cherrypicking patches to make a release is difficult (even if
someone else has just done all of the work, like pumpkings always beg
someone else to do), because regressions are so difficult that long
testing periods are absolutely necessary to ensure that stable releases
do not contain nasty regressions (even though this patch *fixes* a nasty
regression and that there's insufficient testing of unstable
non-releases), and because a misfeature present in two stable releases
is somehow more used and difficult to change in the future than a
misfeature present in one stable release unpatched for seventeen months?
I'm certain that berating and blaming existing testers for missing a
regression (and potential testers for not testing) is a very effective
approach to less -- not more -- testing in the future, let alone further
contributions.
-- c
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