Quality of FreeBSD

[Paul Mather]

On Thu, 2005-07-21 at 14:26 -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:

> Ok, Robert, but then here's the question....
> 
> How come the ATA code which was very stable in 4.x was screwed with in a
> production release, breaking it, with no path backwards to the working
> code?

Not to mention that this happened during the 5.x release cycle.  It's
one thing to have a regression creep in when moving from one major
release to another (e.g., "oh, that's the fallout from introducing Big
Feature XYZ" or "a big architectural revamp may have broken some
things"), but it's another thing entirely to have it happen between
minor releases, which are supposed to be "evolution, not revolution."

(Although the whole "Early Adopter" status for early 5.x releases might
mean all that is muddied when it comes to the 5.x series.)

My main disappointment with the ATA DMA TIMEOUT bug is not that it crept
in (these things happen), but that it did not seem to be taken seriously
when it had done so.  (Though, as Robert said, if the developers can't
reproduce the problem, it's hard for them to work on and fix it.)

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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