Beman Dawes <bdawes@acm.org> writes:
At 12:20 PM 2/10/2004, David Abrahams wrote:
IIUC, we've already found some regressions with 1.31.0, having to do with the graph library and MSVC6. These regressions affect the Python lib also, and the problems show up in the regression test results. It's very disappointing to me that even though the Python library was being tested continuously, we let the release go out anyway.
Yes, that worried me too. Wasn't Python a problem with the last major release too?
I don't know.
Perhaps Python regressions should be looked at more often.
Maybe. The Python library does depend on more parts of Boost than many others, so it makes a good "canary". Mistakes in other libraries can easily break it. But with Python tests not included in some of our "official" tests (ahem), we can easily miss a problem when it shows up.
We ought to ask ourselves how this happened and see if there's something we can do to prevent it in the future.
It comes down to release discipline.
Yes. When Meta-comm took over the 1.30.2 release they insisted on zero regressions on selected platforms/compilers. In the end it was a good thing.
If fixes aren't forthcoming for libraries that many other Boost libraries depend on, it delays testing on the other libraries.
Was that really a factor in this last release? Which libraries were delayed, and which fixes weren't forthcoming?
It was also pretty amazing how many commits were made not just after branch-for-release, but after release candidate testing started. It seems hard to motivate some developers until late in the process.
My guess is that inspecting regression results by hand isn't good enough, and we need an automated system like the BuildBot.
It's not like we didn't know about various regressions.
There was *no* information about the Python regression posted; at least, I didn't see any.
And people doing the regression tests often posted messages indicating concern over failures.
I thought they were usually addressed promptly.
However, if we can turn around critical tests much more often, that would certainly help.
We also ought to be thinking about releasing 1.31.1 ASAP.
Go for it!
Gadzooks; there's no possible way I can manage anything until at _least_ the beginning of March. Is there anyone else that can handle this?
It would be nice to resolve the issue of path lengths over 100 characters in tar files, too.
I guess so. I don't know much about the issue. -- Dave Abrahams Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com