If fixes have not been included from months previously, then my guess is that
you've been the testbed for the fix ("Does this solve your problem?") and
failed to get back to Support with the answer that it's working. Either that
or Support have failed to update the bug to say that it's resolved, it hasn't
been verified as resolved, and hasn't made the release. Or maybe it's not
worked for someone else who had the same issue and has been reopened, or maybe
the next major release has rewritten the same problem.
The rejection of code which hasn't been certified as fixing the problem is a
way of trying to build quality software. Despite the old cliche of "people
wouldn't pay for support if the product worked", there are generally enough
variations in hardware, drivers etc. to ensure that NW Engineering will never
catch all of the potential problems before release. I'm sure that they try to
build a stable version each time, but it never seems to be 100% possible with
any complex piece of software. This isn't simply a question of not running
things through the appropriate test harness - maybe the process could be
improved, but a good number of bugs that are reported are unable to be
reproduced internally within EMC. As such, to identify what the problem is,
Engineering need to get debug information to try to identify what's happening
on the live system or try a similar bugfix to see if that fixes the problem.
I think that the CPE group generally do a pretty good job of patching released
code to improve the quality of that major release. It takes time to identify
and fix each problem though, and with finite resources it's not possible to
find and fix every issue in (for example) the 6 months since 7.3 came out,
especially when there's so much new code there that it's a major learning curve
for them around how things work.
I'm not sure that the model of "Group A writes the code, Group B fixes the
code" is necessarily the best way to go. However, without a group of people
who are constantly trying to move the product forward it would have the
reputation of being a great product - for 10 years ago...
Cheers,
Stuart.
________________________________
From: Legato NetWorker discussion on behalf of Stan Sander
Sent: Thu 22-Jun-06 16:37
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Networker] Bug regressions?
Stuart Whitby wrote:
> The "regression" you're seeing here isn't necessarily a regression as
> such. Each jumbo patch goes through a release process which includes
> testing, and that testing time is based on a cut from the code tree at a
> fixed point in time. 7.3.1, for example, doesn't contain all the fixes
> available on the evening before its release. It contains the fixes
> available at the time the release was cut; probably 2-3 weeks previously.
>
>
> In short, you should probably be *glad* that not all of the fixes are
> there. If they were, you'd have a release with no testing against it.
> And you've seen what 7.3 was like *with* testing..... 8O
>
> Cheers,
>
> Stuart.
>
Well, yes I understand what you are saying and it would seem reasonable
to expect that fixes from the past few weeks aren't in the next release.
But, what I seem to have noticed is that fixes from *months* prior
don't make it into releases either. I guess that's what got me worked up.
--
Stan Sander - CSU Special Projects (505)284-4915
ASAP, LLC, Contractor assigned to Sandia National Laboratories
Unix Systems Administrator
Microsoft: You've got questions. We've got a dancing paperclip.
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