To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com
Cc: jim@jaguNET.com (Jim Jagielski)
Subject: Re: snprintf()
References: <199701070313.VAA19904@sierra.zyzzyva.com>
From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
Date: 07 Jan 1997 10:17:25 +0000
In-Reply-To: Randy Terbush's message of Mon, 06 Jan 1997 21:13:04 -0600
Message-ID: <57u3ot23ii.fsf@tees.elsevier.co.uk>
Lines: 37
Sender: new-httpd-owner@apache.org
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Reply-To: new-httpd@hyperreal.com

Randy Terbush <randy@zyzzyva.com> writes:

> I would vote to include an snprintf() in Apache and use it to fix the
> overflow problem.
> 

Well, I made my concerns known privately but since the concensus is to
continue adding features then I'll make my feeling known more widely.

We're not in code freeze guys, not by even the most flexible of
definitions. We're adding features daily and making considerable
changes to the code. It may seem like they're all innocuous and easily
understood but I'll state again that "if we understood all the changes
we made to the code there would never be any bugs in the first place".

You can only be sure that a beta cycle shakes out bugs if at each
release you make less changes to the code, only fixing things that are
genuinally broken. We're making more changes to the code between beta
releases than we were during the development stages!

My gut feeling is that the beta cycle has invigorated everyone again
and we're finding lots of potential problems with the code. This
suggests that we weren't really ready for a release and that we
weren't really focussed on determining this objectively when we
decided to enter a beta cycle.

My thinking now is that we should put all this new stuff in and then
extend the beta cycle for another month. Otherwise we're going to
release with barely tested code and the inevitable 1.2.1 will have to
be done to fix the bug reports that start coming in when a full
release results in *much* wider use.

-- 
  Paul Richards. Originative Solutions Ltd.  (Netcraft Ltd. contractor)
  Elsevier Science TIS online journal project.
  Email: p.richards@elsevier.co.uk
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155