Patches missing from pre4?

Patches missing from pre4?

[Bart Schaefer]

Looking at diffs againts my patched pre3, there seem to be several patches
that didn't make it into pre4 ... I haven't had a chance to figure out which
ones, and I'm leaving in about an hour to be away for a week, so I thought
I'd throw out the question:  Is there more stuff that's going to change
before the final 3.0 release?  Zoltan, do you anticipate doing a pre5?

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern

New male in /home/schaefer:
>N  2 Justin William Schaefer  Sat May 11 03:43  53/4040  "Happy Birthday"

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Zoltan Hidvegi]

> Looking at diffs againts my patched pre3, there seem to be several patches
> that didn't make it into pre4 ... I haven't had a chance to figure out which
> ones, and I'm leaving in about an hour to be away for a week, so I thought
> I'd throw out the question:  Is there more stuff that's going to change
> before the final 3.0 release?  Zoltan, do you anticipate doing a pre5?

I'm not sure.  I'll leave to a holiday on 5 August, I'd like a 3.0 release
before that.

Zoltan

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Wayne Davison]

Zoltan Hidvegi writes:
> I'm not sure.  I'll leave to a holiday on 5 August, I'd like a 3.0 release
> before that.

Is 3.0 supposed to be a really stable release?  Or is 3.0 supposed to be
a work-the-kinks-out-for-3.1 release?  With all the changes that have
been going on, it seems like it should have more time to settle down
before release (with some kind of a change moratorium).

..wayne..

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Zoltan Hidvegi]

> Is 3.0 supposed to be a really stable release?  Or is 3.0 supposed to be
> a work-the-kinks-out-for-3.1 release?  With all the changes that have
> been going on, it seems like it should have more time to settle down
> before release (with some kind of a change moratorium).

I think that 3.0-pre4 is already quite stable.  I'd like to release it as a
stable release.  Really I do not like this big distinction between stable
and beta releases.  As I know other shells (bash, pdksh) do is in a much
more relaxed way.  I'd like to release 3.0 but I'd like to make production
releases much more frequently than before (more than two years passed since
the last `production' release).

You probably noticed that I added several debug test to zsh.  Additionally
when ZSH_MEM, ZSH_MEM_DEBUG, ZSH_MEM_WARNING and ZSH_SECURE_FREE is enabled
all free's are checked and the free'd memory is zeroed.  This means that is
someone uses an already freeed memory it will turn out soon.  I'd also like
to try checker on zsh one day (unfortunately I did not manage to get it
work under Linux with libc.so.5.3.12, and I also failed on Solaris 2.4 (it
seems that we installed some patched which Checker does not like)).  I used
electric-fence and zsh passed the test (but electric fence is not really
good for zsh since zsh uses _many_ small blocks allocated by malloc() so it
requires huge amount of virtual memory).  Also thanks to Bart
heap/permanent allocation usage is much more consistent now.  The most
serious and difficult to reproduce bugs in zsh were memory management bugs.
I do hope that these are mostly fixed.  There may be some coding bugs of
course but these are usually trivially fixed by a one-line patch.

Zoltan

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Carlos Carvalho]

Zoltan Hidvegi (hzoli@cs.elte.hu) wrote on 29 July 1996 12:16:
 >> Is 3.0 supposed to be a really stable release?  Or is 3.0 supposed to be
 >> a work-the-kinks-out-for-3.1 release?  With all the changes that have
 >> been going on, it seems like it should have more time to settle down
 >> before release (with some kind of a change moratorium).
 >
 >I think that 3.0-pre4 is already quite stable.  I'd like to release it as a
 >stable release.  Really I do not like this big distinction between stable
 >and beta releases.  As I know other shells (bash, pdksh) do is in a much
 >more relaxed way.  I'd like to release 3.0 but I'd like to make production
 >releases much more frequently than before (more than two years passed since
 >the last `production' release).

I think that this can be done after a really good 3.0 release.
However, the initial one should be really good, exactly because of the
long time since the last one. People will say "they didn't manage to
fix this in two years?!"

Carlos

Preparing to release 3.0

[Wayne Davison]

I said:
> > Is 3.0 supposed to be a really stable release?  Or is 3.0 supposed to be
> > a work-the-kinks-out-for-3.1 release?

Zoltan Hidvegi writes:
> I think that 3.0-pre4 is already quite stable. [...] There may be some
> coding bugs of course but these are usually trivially fixed by a one-line
> patch.

My question of stability was more about code-base stability and the
trivial bugs, not crashing.  A flurry of one-line patches to fix trivial
bugs in 3.0 is what we want to avoid as much as possible.  We need to
ensure that the recent trap changes are free of trivial problems (like
the BUG bug), and that the recent brace changes are as well, etc.

Why don't we declare the upcoming zsh pre5 "frozen" (basically pre4 with
the latest patches)?  It will remain unchanged except for bug fixes
deemed necessary for release.  Then we can pound on it for a while and
after a couple weeks of code-base stability, decide if we believe 3.0 is
ready for release.

..wayne..

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Carlos Carvalho]

Zoltan Hidvegi (hzoli@cs.elte.hu) wrote on 29 July 1996 00:00:
 >> Looking at diffs againts my patched pre3, there seem to be several
 >> patches that didn't make it into pre4 ... I haven't had a chance
 >> to figure out which ones, and I'm leaving in about an hour to be
 >> away for a week, so I thought I'd throw out the question: Is there
 >> more stuff that's going to change before the final 3.0 release?
 >> Zoltan, do you anticipate doing a pre5?
 >
 >I'm not sure.  I'll leave to a holiday on 5 August, I'd like a 3.0 release
 >before that.

I don't believe it's possible. However, since pre-4 you already post 5
or 6 fixes. I'd like to see a new pre-5 incorporating them in a few
days.

Carlos

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Zoltan Hidvegi]

> I don't believe it's possible. However, since pre-4 you already post 5
> or 6 fixes. I'd like to see a new pre-5 incorporating them in a few
> days.

You probably noticed that all of these fixes were very minor.  None of them
affect the stability of zsh.  Only the zsfree bug could have caused a SEGV
but only if ZSH_MEM is used which is not enabled by default.  If you know
anything which crashes 3.0-pre4, tell me.

Zoltan

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Carlos Carvalho]

Zoltan Hidvegi (hzoli@cs.elte.hu) wrote on 29 July 1996 14:57:
 >You probably noticed that all of these fixes were very minor.  None of them
 >affect the stability of zsh.

Agreed. What I mean is that there have been significant changes at
each new pre- release, so I think we should wait somewhat longer
before making the official release. On the other hand, since you're
leaving for hollidays, it'd be nice to have another pre with all the
latest fixes, so that the list can pound on it. Another advantage is
that we don't have to apply the patches by hand :-)

Anyway, it's a bad idea to make an official release just before an
absence period of the maintainer.

Carlos

Re: Patches missing from pre4?

[Vinnie Shelton]

carlos@riglos.fisica.ufpr.br said:
>  What I mean is that there have been significant changes at each new 
> pre- release, so I think we should wait somewhat longer before making 
> the official release. On the other hand, since you're leaving for 
> hollidays, it'd be nice to have another pre with all the latest 
> fixes, so that the list can pound on it. Another advantage is that we 
> don't have to apply the patches by hand :-)

> Anyway, it's a bad idea to make an official release just before an 
> absence period of the maintainer.

This is absolutely correct on both counts as far as I'm concerned.  Zoltan, 
I'd like to see a pre-5 release just before you go away on vacation, and if no 
bugs are found in that version, to release that as 3.0 upon your return.

My $.02.

--vin