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

[Roland Mainz]

Kevin E Martin wrote:
> 
> 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. 

There was no library interface CHANGED. There was only a new one ADDED.
And LOTS of work and testing was done to gurantee 100% _binary_
backwards compatibility to the previous version of libXaw. No single
application, even compiled ones will break.

BTW: If such an approval by the arch board is required then the
"Tooltip" widget needs to be backed out, too. AFAIK it was added with
Xfree86 and was NEVER approved by the Xorg arch board.

> All such library
> interface changes must be approved by the architecture board before
> being included in any release.

1. The change was ANNOUCED to the various mailinglists
2. For each single change a bug was filed, a patch was attached to
bugzilla and the commit messages were CLEARLY visible, including bug
number, commit comment and http link to bugzilla
3. I annonced the change on the #freedesktop IRC channel and NOONE
complained.
4. Some of the authors of libXaw, libXaw3D and LessTif have looked at
the changes and agreed with them
5. libXaw's XawPrintShell is basically a XmPrintShell clone. NO ONE
EVERY complained that Motif depends on libXp. Why is it suddenly such a
problem that libXaw depends on that library, too ?

If the Xorg arch board is needed to approve that change than it should
be better to add that topic to the next meeting instead of backing that
work simply out. People have worked hard on XawPrintShell and it is at
least unfair that something like the Tooltip widget slipped in and the
PrintShell stuff gets backed out under the same conditions.

> 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.

Will there be a seperate library for the "Tooltip" widget, too ? What
will happen with a Table widget gets added. Do we need a seperate
library, too ?

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

I already explained that a seperate library isn't an option since
internal data from libXaw are required which aren't available. And:
libXp is MANDATORY for an X11 release since major applications depend on
it.
And making libXaw depend on it is a logical step of adding printing
support to this toolkit.

----

Bye,
Roland

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