Re: [Edbrowse-dev] Error Legs

[Adam Thompson <arthompson1990@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Feb 09, 2014 at 09:18:46AM -0500, Karl Dahlke wrote:
> > I'd still prefer it if it just killed the offending context as well
> 
> I agree, and I might be the one to work on this -
> but that would be one of those major changes that I think we said we would
> wait on until our work was stable.
> I keep coming back round to the fact that if we can't get this to work
> with moz js 24 libraries as distributed, then edbrowse is dead anyways,
> except perhaps on our three machines.
> If it can't be distributed then I don't know how much time I should spend on it.
> I'm not trying to be Debbie Downer, just practical.

Hmmm, it breaks with *one* distributed package of mozjs 24,
and not even a stable one. The fact is that it works with mozjs as distributed
by mozilla, which tells me that it works well enough for distribution.

> We should be doing what we can to get it to function in the debian world.
> If that is both in process and/or on hold,
> or if one of you is taking that on, then I could work on error legs in parallel,
> and would be willing to do that, as it is a systemic change throughout.

You're right that we *need* to work out how to get this to function with the
debian package, and I think both Chris and I are working on this.
I think it'd be helped greatly by improved error handling though,
as it *may* be that the bug with debian is a reflection of something wrong in
edbrowse's use of the lib which is showing up in other strange problems when
run against hand-compiled versions.
At the end of the day, if we know the browser is properly stable with one
version of the lib it'll make it easier to find where the instability is with
the debian package. At the moment, I 'm fairly sure that the bug is something
to do with not defining something or something missing in our initialisation or
the Debian package. However, when the thing segfaults for seemingly no reason
sometimes, there's always the suspician that something else is going on.

> I just keep looking up and seeing the sword of damocles overhead.

I think this is being a bit over-dramatic.
The cleanup for the new release and the stabilisation process is painful,
but certainly not fatal for the project.
I'm not surprised about this, there are things which need to be fixed and the
changes in the mozilla api are signifficant.
Debian are still packaging edbrowse so it's not gone from their repo and is
still in stable. As long as we can show them there's development this will
hopefully be ok. I think we need to make the release relatively soon,
but I think waiting for error handling,
whilst perhaps pushing the concept of code cleanup a bit, makes sense.
After all, what'll kill the project is a bug-filled release, not a delayed one.
If people view edbrowse as a segfault wating to happen then they'll stop using it.
If they have to wait a little longer for a major new release then they'll
probably be fine with that as long as they know why.

Cheers,
Adam.