bug#31554: acknowledged by developer (Re: bug#31554: Fwd: Re: Potential bug in md5sum)

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Bill,

On 2018-11-18 2:37 p.m., Riedy, Bill wrote:
> The wording is vague, could you please clarify which of the following 
> are true:
>
> 1) That you recognize this as a bug and it is going to be fixed
>
> 2) That you recognize this as a bug but it will NOT be fixed
>
> 3) Some other scenario that I can't think of, but you may have.

The original forwarded messaged said the following:

   "md5sum is a part of the GNU coreutils package, [...]
   It was ported by the gnuwin32 Project to Windows: [...]
   The cause of the  error you've reported is probably the fact the
   gnuwin32  version of md5sum is from April 21, 2005."

( https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31554#5 )

Later, Paul replied:

   "Could be, but this doesn't look like it's relevant to the current
   codebase for GNU coreutils. 2005 was a looong time ago."

( https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=31554#8 )

After which I've closed the bug report.

The meaning is:
The reported problem is happening
on a very old version of the program (from 2005 - 13 years old),
and using a port (GnuWin32) which GNU coreutils developers
did not create and can't easily provide support.

As such, there is no point in investigating further.
It could be a bug in the (very old) version, or it could
be another problem.

If you can reproduce the bug in a recent version (the current is 8.30).
then there would be more incentive to investigate (though once again,
the GnuWin32 is provided by others, and we can not easily support it).

regards,
 - assaf