RE: configure with --enable-malloc-debugging fails to compile

["Dave Korn" <dave dot korn at artimi dot com>]

On 13 February 2008 21:20, Christopher Faylor wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 13, 2008 at 12:16:44PM -0800, Jim Kleckner wrote:
>> FYI, the --enable-malloc-debugging option fails to compile with current
>> CVS sources. 
>> 
>> (/oss/src/configure --prefix=/oss/mdebug.install --enable-debugging
>> --enable-malloc-debugging -v; make) >& make.out
> 
> And your proposal for fixing this is...?
> 
> cgf


 ... to follow in a separate post when he has time?
 
  I don't interpret "FYI" as indicating a proposal, just a heads-up.  I often
find them useful even without patches attached because they direct my
attention to things I might not have been conscious of myself.

  Little-used features like this often bit-rot, and the only time anyone
discovers it is when they're busy trying to track down something else, think
"Hey maybe that feature will help", try it and find it's broken.

  They don't necessarily have the resources to get side-tracked into finding a
solution, they are often working under time pressure and have to get on with
solving their *real* problem, so the only rational plan is to abandon the
attempt to use the broken tool, which involves an uncertain and open-ended
subgoal, and try using one of the other tools at their hand to solve the
primary problem.  Once they've done that, they no longer have any /need/ for
the broken tool, and it's even harder when you've got a TODO list as long as
your arm to justify going off at a tangent.  So the problem just gets left,
and forgotten about, and not fixed, and sometime later someone else in a
similar situation discovers it, and discovers that it's broken, and they also
don't have time to do anything about it, and go on to solve their problem some
other way, and so on indefinitely.

  At least this way more than one person knows about the existence of the
problem.

  We should of course make better use of the bugzilla, but at the moment we
don't, and that's just the way it is for now, and although just doing a
braindump on the list isn't the best solution, it beats doing nothing at all
in my way of valuing these things.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....