Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!SUN.COM!dshr
From: dshr@SUN.COM (David Rosenthal)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Toolkit and NULL pointers
Message-ID: <8803010421.AA01012@devnull.sun.com>
Date: 1 Mar 88 01:09:38 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 29

When I tried to use the version of the toolkit released with
X11R1 it took me less than an hour to find the first NULL
pointer bug.  At the time,  I thought this was pretty
depressing,  and I spent some time explaining to people
that the fixes to map page zero out on VAXen had been available
for a while,  and that anyone claiming to ship "portable" software
should really take the time to use them.

So,  now that we've finished configuration testing the server
in the pre-release of R2,  I thought I'd pick up the toolkit
work I'd dropped when it became obvious that the R1 toolkit
was unusable.

Once again,  its taken me less than an hour to find a NULL
pointer bug!

So,  can one of the toolkit implementors explain:

-	why no-one bothered to run with page zero mapped out?

-	why no-one bothered to test this stuff on the Sun
	we lent you?

I am sending this to "xpert" in the hope that it will raise
the embarassement level to the point where some action will
be taken on this.  It is long past the time where bugs like
this are to be shrugged off.

	David.