Re: Long Float Error from Gnat

[dewar@gnat.com]

In article <363C8EAA.57DBA71C@easystreet.com>,
  Al Christians <achrist@easystreet.com> wrote:
> if none of those customers with their CMM software processes have found
> this problem that I unearthed within about 1 month of starting to use
> GNAT day-to-day for real work in my 1-person operation, and if none of
> them would ask ACT to fix it, who am I to complain?


As anyone in the compiler business will tell you, you can have thousands of
users, and have them run all kinds of extremely complex code, and then some
one comes along and does something amazingly simple, and you find a surprising
bug involving something simple that never worked, and it is hard to believe
that no one has noticed it. Actually this isn't unique to compilers, look at
all the simple bugs that exist in Windows 95 for example, after literally
thousands of beta testers had hammered it.

So it's not a matter of complaining at all, but simply noting that you have
found something strange, and you should not assume that all these "customers
with their CM processes" will have found the bug! We have lots of bug reports
from non-supported users, and some small but significant percentage turn out
to be real bugs that no one else has noticed. Even if you are paying ACT
nothing at all, we will look carefully at your report, and it is a bug, will
fix it in a future release -- not such a bad deal for $0.00! We can't promise
immediate response or an immediate fix, that guarateed response is reserved
for our supported customers, but we do look at EVERY report submitted
carefully, and if they represent bugs, will fix them. Note that it is always
more likely that we will look sooner, and fix the problem sooner, if your
report is simple and well documented (this is true for customers as well!)

Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies

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