On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 08:55:17AM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: > On Wed, Jun 08, 2005 at 01:10:43PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > The primary question, I think, is whether one can be 100% sure whether a > > bug that results in an FTBFS on only one out of eleven platforms will > > not have any effect whatsoever on another platform. [...] > Portability bugs are bugs, and generally worth fixing, but we really ought > to be giving higher priority to bugs that are known to have real effects on > users, don't you think? > > > Usually, the answer to that one is "no, you can't be sure". FTBFS bugs > > that occur on only one platform are rare, very rare; most build failures > > are mistakes in packaging (which usually have effect on all > > architectures, rather than just one) or things such as incorrect > > assumptions regarding char signedness or word length, that have effect > > on all big endian or 64-bit platforms. Of course, these usually result > > in runtime errors rather than compile time ones. > > And various of those bugs, when they are *known* to imply runtime brokenness > on release architectures, should be regarded as release-critical; but that's > not really generalizable to "all porting bugs". We are really saying the same thing here. I'm saying "you shouldn't generalize; portability bugs can be RC even if they don't have an impact on more popular platforms", while you are saying "you shouldn't generalize; portability bugs can be not RC if they don't have an impact on more popular platforms". While my emphasis is different, it really is the same message ;-) -- The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the pavement is precisely one bananosecond
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