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(a)gmail.com