Re: PATCH: backport of symlink fix for issue 142 to cvs 1.11.9.1

[Paul Edwards]

"Derek Robert Price" <derek@ximbiot.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.2528.1067263659.21628.bug-cvs@gnu.org...
> | If there is an expectation that CVS works with repositories
> |
> |that have symbolic links, and it doesn't currently actually
> |work, then it should be fixed.  You can issue a travel advisory
>
> There was no previous expectation or documentation that CVS would work
> with a symlinked root.

We're talking about an ordinary softlink in Unix, right?

I don't expect ANY application to fail just because I happen
to softlink to the repository rather than hardlink.

BTW, I have softlinked to the repository many times, and it
has worked every time.

I don't know which particular operation makes it fail when
using symbolic links, but whoever added that feature, made
it fail IMO, and is thus a bug that can have <xyz> effects.

> Cool as it might be that feature does work with
> one now, I am against including the backport on 1.11.x for this reason.
>
> If you guys can raise enough relative clamor and few objections here and
> on info-cvs, I will consider changing my vote.

There is no clamour calling for it to NOT being implemented,
either here or info-cvs.

There is 2 votes for, one against.  The relative clamour is on
the side of bugs being fixed in cvs 1.11.x, not throwing bug
fixes away.  There was a time, only a few months ago, when
there was only one version of CVS, and you could add new
development willy-nilly and break anything you wanted.

Have we gone from that state of affairs, to an extreme version
where bugs that have already made people's life miserable,
in real life, won't be fixed because we are trying to make
this new "stable" version infinitely stable?  Even if that was
the goal, the goal failed miserably in cvs 1.11.7, where it
was shown to be not even remotely stable, necessitating
a 24-hour bug fix.

I can only raise as much "clamour" as one person can raise,
but throwing away bug fixes to achieve a goal (infinite
stability, unlike cvs 1.11.7) that is impossible to achieve,
in lieu of a goal (empty BUGS) that is possible to achieve,
is not what I had in mind.

BTW, can we have this latest bug, dealing with symlinks,
added to BUGS?

Maybe we need 3 versions of CVS:

1. Dangerous buggy version, where anything in BUGS can
bite you when you least expect it.

2. Version where we will fix all bugs, regardless of how
complex they are, ie regardless of how dangerous it is to
implement.

3. Dangerous development version, where anything can, and
does go wrong.

I would keep up with version (2), probably staying a release
behind if I am notified that "some of these bug fixes were quite
dangerous".

BFN.  Paul.