Re: Gnat, tasking, Vista

[Jean-Pierre Rosen <rosen@adalog.fr>]

tmoran@acm.org a �crit :
> These are old programs that (except for a new program to test for this
> problem) were compiled some time ago with 3.15p  I hate to shake the
> dust off the source code of working programs and recompile new versions
> hoping that the old bug will be fixed and no new ones will appear -
> though I realize I may have to do just that.
This is a very common (and unfortunate) line of thinking: "I prefer bugs 
that I know rather than (fewer) bugs that I don't know".

Although there is some sense in it, this is just pushing too far. Be 
assured that *lots* of bugs have been fixed since 3.15p, and if new ones 
have been introduced, they are certainly in very complicated and 
unlikely cases, since the latest versions of Gnat are routinely used for 
demanding and critical software - or you can have bugs in the recent 
2005 features, but you are certainly not using them.

Why did I climb on my soapbox? Because I see constantly people asserting 
the risk of making a change, without asserting the risk of *not* making 
the change.

Note that most of the free software community takes the opposite view 
(always use the latest version) and it does not work so bad...
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------
            J-P. Rosen (rosen@adalog.fr)
Visit Adalog's web site at http://www.adalog.fr