91–100 of 112 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But on the other hand, if the software is stable and no longer needs updating why force small inconsequential changes just to appear to be maintained? Just release when there's something to release.
There is no software without bugs. People seem to know that. Developers sometimes do not.
Software updates are a kind of project heartbeat. The content of them is less important than the signal, "this project is still alive, and maintainers are fixing issues for people". If a project does not put out updates, then users may (understandably) worry that if they have an issue, it won't get addressed promptly. I actually don't think there is anything wrong with having time-based releases, and putting very lit…
Following that logic, a software cannot possibly be completed - It can be either in development or dead. Which would mean you either have a budget of time, money and resources for constant maintenance of your software - or you might not write that software at all. Repeat that for every new piece of software you want to write.
The problem is that this is impossible to do for hobbyist authors, so we would lose a large amount of free or open-source software currently available.
Glad to see this being written. "Trained" is the word I have thought of many times as well. It is perplexing to see people wanting updates. It is possible to write finished programs that are bug-free[FN1]. But when eternal rounds of patching becomes a religion, what sort of standard are developers promoting? Every program is expected to have security holes that will need to be patched? What about not releasing softwa…
I gave up on Windows about 10 years ago. I've had to use it for work sometimes, but the Windows Updates are actually destructive sometimes, and often take hours to install during business hours (especially if you happen to need to reboot before an important meeting...). I can't handle uncertainty in Software, and I think that many business are losing productivity because of this. Or maybe IT support departments are h…
Sadly the Linux ecosystem (baring the kernel and the GNU supplied coreutils) do not seem to do any better. And from what gather, Apple is notorious for breaking things as they see fit as well. Not sure how well the BSDs do in this regard.
Another subtle difference is that on Linux platforms, you have more control over when/how to update, as well as visibility into exactly what is updating. I'm sure it's visible on other platforms, but I don't have to worry about rebooting my machine and having to wait 2 hours for it to come up.
Perhaps another point worth mentioning, LTS versions of Linux distros (Debian stable, or Ubuntu LTS versions) mainly get security patches, and, optionally, back ported software. That makes your OS stack super stable!
I'd put kernel upgrades into a different bucket... but most users don't need to update their kernel on a daily or even yearly basis except for security patches.
Great point about coreutils too! No need to update ls and grep...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
or.... You are trying to avoid an update that is going to break your machine/workflow. If security updates were sent along a different channel than feature updates, this wouldn't be an issue. But companies keep tying these together, and there are only so many features you can carelessly break before users become aware of what you are really doing.
If you are not happy with the direction a certain piece of software is heading in, you are free to switch to a competitor that fits your workflow better. This mentality is what led to Windows XP sticking around long after being declared dead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But on the other hand, if the software is stable and no longer needs updating why force small inconsequential changes just to appear to be maintained? Just release when there's something to release.
There is no software without bugs. People seem to know that. Developers sometimes do not.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are projects that are close to bugfree, though. You can use a 3 year old version of sqlite without any difficulty. I don't know what version of "ls" or "mkdir" my machine runs, but I never worry about these simple utilities being out of date or behaving differently in release/staging. These utilities are essentially done, and 30 years from now they'll still work fine. There is no software without bugs in the sa…
I've had enough of small utilities that didn't work as expected. Also ls or mkdir can for example be part of busybox ported to a Blackfin. No guarantees that there are no bugs in these by far! Edit: here you have the source code for the "small" ls utility: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/src/ls.c . Yes, over 5000 lines.
[1] https://github.com/Bluerise/OpenBSD-src/blob/master/bin/ls/l... [2] cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/~checkout~/src/bin/ls/ls.c?rev=1.75.4.1 [3] https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/master/bin/ls/ls.c
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It's not cmake's job to limit the behaviour of programs written with it.
OTOH, allocating & using memory correctly so that a maliciously-crafted Makefile can't get elevated permissions is .
> OTOH, allocating & using memory correctly so that a maliciously-crafted Makefile can't get elevated permissions is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no software without bugs. People seem to know that. Developers sometimes do not.
There are projects that are close to bugfree, though. You can use a 3 year old version of sqlite without any difficulty. I don't know what version of "ls" or "mkdir" my machine runs, but I never worry about these simple utilities being out of date or behaving differently in release/staging. These utilities are essentially done, and 30 years from now they'll still work fine. There is no software without bugs in the sa…
Really? A running 3 years out-of-date sqlite install?
Methinks some hackers smell chum in the water. XSS, remote code execution, priviledge escalation, directory traversal... and for most of these, we even have choices on how to attack! Plenty of overflow attacks involved here. Where are the idiot script kiddies when you need them to demo how this ignorance hurts?
And once in to your sql database, I wonder where else we can pivot...
Remember how shellshock shook the world, because the software bedrock was actually insecure? Yeah... your old, "stable" stuff has had holes the entire time.
Stay current. If your OS makes that a challenge, ditch it for a better one.
Software updates are a kind of project heartbeat. The content of them is less important than the signal, "this project is still alive, and maintainers are fixing issues for people". If a project does not put out updates, then users may (understandably) worry that if they have an issue, it won't get addressed promptly. I actually don't think there is anything wrong with having time-based releases, and putting very lit…
I think this is part of the mindset the OP is criticizing. Following that logic, a software cannot possibly be completed - It can be either in development or dead. Which would mean you either have a budget of time, money and resources for constant maintenance of your software - or you might not write that software at all. Repeat that for every new piece of software you want to write. The problem is that this is impos…
He offloaded the whole project onto another team (who mostly backported fixes) that kept it going until early 2016. The rest of us were already in Linux 4.X territory by then.
If you cant maintain it, you can pay someone.
Or, thanks to Github, lets talk about letting the code-literate userbase sort it out themselves. Assuming they care enough.
Or, we could pivot this discussion to the "evils of Capitalism" and whatnot since that userbase probably needs to eat.