From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,80b3e504140e89fd X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-06-28 20:15:07 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!cox.net!p02!news2.central.cox.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3D1D25FA.1060507@telepath.com> From: Ted Dennison User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.0) Gecko/20020530 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Config_Files proposal References: <3D0FAC67.A4861809@san.rr.com> <3D10B6B1.AFE9D4E8@san.rr.com> <3D10E046.E604231D@san.rr.com> <3D1204B5.4620F160@san.rr.com> <3D1215A8.719D39C5@nbi.dk> <3D123852.1040508@san.rr.com> <3D1289D2.9090107@telepath.com> <3D134669.5070000@san.rr.com> <3D173599.C515EE53@san.rr.com> <3D175DA2.D6F8F41D@san.rr.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sat, 29 Jun 2002 03:15:01 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.12.51.201 X-Complaints-To: abuse@cox.net X-Trace: news2.central.cox.net 1025320501 68.12.51.201 (Fri, 28 Jun 2002 23:15:01 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 28 Jun 2002 23:15:01 EDT Organization: Cox Communications Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:26787 Date: 2002-06-29T03:15:01+00:00 List-Id: Stephen Leake wrote: > Darren New writes: > >>But you can eliminate a large number of race conditions by implementing a >>merge. You can change it from "if you start the same program twice, you're >>screwed" to "if you click the button on both instances in the length of time >>it takes to write the file, you're screwed." I think that's reasonable. I think when they fixed the Emacs ada-mode case exceptions file writing algorithm, they did something like this. I was satisfied at the time, for the exact reason Darren mentions. > > Right, I don't. I tend to be very picky; a file locking protocol is > either "right", or it's "wrong"; no room for "mostly right" :). I'd have to agree with this. For a single application like Emacs, it may be good enough to come close. For something that is going to be an official part of Ada, I don't think we should put in a feature that proports to solve a problem that it doesn't actually solve. > It is smaller, but I'm willing to bet someone will hit it. For > example, when you shutdown the computer, all the active editor > instances will write to the config file at once. Maybe us "real" Exactly. And when someone gets this problem, hoses their config file that they had setup *juuuust* right, and tracks the problem down, they are going to be quite ticked that the language advertised something as safe when it in fact wasn't. > programmers don't leave editors active when we shutdown, but a lot of > people do! Actually, I would probably not have that happen to me, just because I never purposely shut my systems down. They only way they go down is the hard way. :-)