On Thu, 2006-04-27 at 22:52, Mike McCarty wrote: > >> > >>Here's one which may make more headway for understanding. There is > >>in any piece of software's life a thing called "integration test" > >>where it is tested with other pieces it must coexist with. Until > >>any given piece has been tested with other pieces, it may work > >>fine, or it may not, but we don't know. > > > > > > That would imply that you shouldn't expect software to work > > unless it all comes from a single vendor, which should > > not be the case at all - and if it is, you probably > > shouldn't use any of it. Your interfaces either do > > what they are documented to do or not, and no amount > > of changes to other parts should change that. > > I guarantee you, with anything as complex as an entire > OS distribution, the interfaces do not all do exactly > what they are documented to do. Anyone believing otherwise > lives in a fantasy land. Oh, I believe a lot of things are broken. I'm just not sure I agree that replacing everything at once with a new set that passed a couple of tests together is the right way to deal with it. In particular it doesn't make any sense to me to have to replace a kernel and device drivers that have worked flawlessly on my hardware for the last year or more with some wildly different version just to get a new version of evolution and some other desktop apps. > It is true that not all software would benefit as much > from integration test as others. OTOH, things like the > compilers, linkage editors, link libraries, kernel, > server programs, device drivers, installers, disc editors > and partition managers, and boot loaders all need some > integration test. You seem to be forgetting that with fedora, the users *are* the integration test. And for people who have their own apps, the OS distribution is just supposed to supply working unix-like interfaces. > And not with just software, either. Many BIOS are known > to be broken. And then there are different hardware for > test. Trying to test all combinations just takes too much > time. > > Look at all the stuff SELinux broke. Well, yes - the unix-like interface was pretty well designed by about sysvr4 when linux started the attempt to emulate it. -- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
