On Wed, 24 Sep 2003, Etienne Goyer wrote: > > Something that works in Linux, sure. Something that works in broken Linux? > > No. Fix the breakage in Linux, instead. That's our strenght, and I *will* > > stick to it as a Debian maintainer. > > While I agree with you on a technical level and admire your commitment > to excellence, this may not be practictal. The installed base is huge > and the interested party (Linux distributor) numerous. Getting > everybody to update broken packages will be quite an endeavour.
We don't have to get everybody to update, only the people who are running Cyrus. > > There is a proper Unix way to do it (using alarm(). this needs to be added > > to Cyrus IMHO) that *might* not work in certain Linux glibc/kernel > > combinations. > > That's the crux of the problem : if the glibc/kernel combination > correspond to the major part of the installed base, it might continue to > hurt for a long time. If it is a single combination, that can be documented. > > Now, if other Unixes have stupid lock and alarm() bugs, that deadlock > > testing code would be even more useful... :-) > > In the case of closed-source OS, there may be nothing we can do about it > except working around the bug. Or reporting it to the vendor. Which is exactly what I think we should do in the case of Linux. -Rob -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Rob Siemborski * Andrew Systems Group * Cyert Hall 207 * 412-268-7456 Research Systems Programmer * /usr/contributed Gatekeeper
