Re: Containers with Ada

[Stephen Leake <stephen.a.leake.1@gsfc.nasa.gov>]

"Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@home.com> writes:

> <snip>
> > Perhaps a better solution for open source packages is to distribute
> > exactly the version you test with (which you may have patched), with
> > the caveat that users who use other versions are on their own.
> 
> Certainly, that is one solution. For large packages like florist however,
> distributing that with a small application goes against the grain, especially
> for the user who downloads with 56k modems.

Hmm. If they have the same version, they don't have to download your
copy. If they don't, they can either try it with a different version,
or download your copy. I don't see how they are worse of than if you
did not provide a copy. Ah, maybe you thought I meant the packages
should be bundled in your zip file; probably not.

> <snip>
> > I would hope you would make an effort to contribute fixes and upgrade
> > to later versions, but there's really no need to require your users to
> > do that on their own!
> 
> You don't specifically indicate what I should perform "fixes and upgrade
> to later versions" for, but I'll assume that you mean my own contributed
> applications.

Sorry, I wasn't very clear. For example, if you distribute an app that
works with Florist 1.1, but breaks with Florist 1.2, you should either
upgrade your app to work with Florist 1.2, or fix Florist 1.2,
whichever seems more appropriate.

> My goal for written applications, is to be the "May Tag repair man". I want to
> be able to move onto _NEW_ projects, since time is a limited resource.  If I
> must keep revisiting an application that does not need enhancing, just to
> make it compile and work again, I get rather annoyed (when the change is
> seemingly unnecessary).
> 
> It's an imperfect world, so I accept the reality that changes are sometimes
> required. But IMHO, it should be possible most of the time to build applications
> without making a career out of it ;-)

Yes, I totally agree. I'm working on Windex (a binding to Win32), and
for now I feel free to change the user API, because I know it's pretty
far from right. But at some point, it has to freeze, and just live
with any imperfections.

-- 
-- Stephe