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From: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: what's most important to you for R5?
Keywords: Easy-to-use  International  Selections
Message-ID: <64905@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV>
Date: 17 Jul 90 18:02:30 GMT
References: <1336@pai.UUCP> <1990Jul4.125628.16560@eng.umd.edu>
Sender: usenet@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV
Reply-To: casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom)
Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Lines: 51

| From: stripes@eng.umd.edu (Joshua Osborne)
| 
| > From: erc@pai.UUCP (Eric Johnson)
| > 
| > 5) Contrib code that compiles on the new release.  Perhaps the contrib
| > tape(s) should be released after the core release (by about a month, say).
| 
| Please don't do this.  I had 50% of what was in X11R4/contrib/clients up in
| less then 9 days after the Release (about 6 days after I got a disk big
| 'nuf to play with the Release).

  Your nine days is one of the shortest I've heard of.  You must have a very
good background in X11.  That's very nice for you.  It took me about five weeks
to get the contrib programs that I could get compiled and running up. 
But, even
if my time was excessive and we assume that yours is more normal, why should
everyone in the world waste nine days of their time (and their employer's time)
working redundantly on exactly the same problem?

  Typically a month without the newest foobaz versions of various contrib
programs won't bother anyone.  After all, the old compiled versions will
still work as long as the protocol stays the same.

| I don't mind the work, I got alot of neat programs, and learned a bit about
| X11R4 by doing it.  It was a "Good Thing".

  I learned a lot in the process too.  I'm not sure I can justify calling it
a good thing however.  If I got a car from the factory and had to spend a
month fixing it before I could drive it, and in the process learned a lot
about the car ...  Well, you get my point.

  Along these lines, I'd also like to suggest that two things be done for the
R5 release:

    1.	Install the distribution in some non-standard place and make sure it
	runs from there.  It only has to be done once.  I'd say that 50% of
	my initial R4 bug reports to MIT were because of hard coded paths.

    2.	Install and test the distribution on more hardware/software platforms.
	Somewhere on the order of 30% of my initial R4 bug reports were because
	R4 had never been tested under SunOS 3.5 ...

	Yes, I realize that MIT doesn't have the machine or people resources
	for this.  I suggest that MIT use volunteer BETA sites to perform
	prerelease testing.  I myself would be willing to help along those
	lines.  And yes, I'm willing to sign non-disclosure agreements, etc.

I think that these two steps would improve the initial quality of the
distribution tremendously.

Casey