Official protest against bug 1060 / was: Re: Away for a few days...

[Kevin E Martin]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 09:52:33PM +0200, Roland Mainz wrote:
> Kevin E Martin wrote:
> > One other bug regarding Xprint was discussed today: bug #1060.  The
> > additional code to support Xprint changes the libXaw interface, and most
> > of us were not aware of the change until the bug report was filed.  Alan
> > Coopersmith noted that you brought this up issue on the mailing list and
> > we all agreed that we should have taken a look at it at that time, but
> > we failed to do so.  We apologize for that oversight, and agreed to try
> > to do a better job of monitoring interface changes in the future.
> > 
> > The solution was to back out the changes to libXaw and suggest that a
> > separate library be created to handle the new Xprint code (even if hooks
> > into libXaw are needed). 
> 
> That is technicially not possible since such a library must be able to
> operate with libXaw internals.
> 
> NOte:
> The XawPrintShell code is a "clone" of the Motif2 XmPrintShell widget.
> Any NO ONE ever complained against the detail that Motif depends on
> libXp. NO ONE.
> 
> > If you have time and are feeling up to it, we
> > will allow those changes in this release even though we will soon be in
> > a code freeze.  We suggest that you create a patch and attach it to bug
> > 1060, so that everyone can review the changes.
> 
> Kevin:
> I hereby OFFICIALLY PROTEST against the backout. I have annouced the
> changes, I have got reviews from many people and now the whole work of
> one year and many people was simply backed out for nothing. Could you
> please UNDO that ?

After this change was brought to the attention of the release wranglers,
it was discussed during several release wranglers calls and the decision
was to back out the changes as noted.  Again, we apologize for the
oversight in not recognizing that this library interface change occurred
without first going through the architecture board.  All such library
interface changes must be approved by the architecture board before
being included in any release.

The solution to make this functionality available, as suggested by Keith
Packard, was that a separate library could be created and included in
the release, even though it is after the feature freeze deadline.  It
was also noted that the new library would be allowed to hook into the
libXaw internals as needed.

If this solution is not technically possible, then you are free to make
your case to the release wranglers for other alternatives.