[Vm-dev] Re: Problem compiling Mac VM

[Andreas Raab]

On 4/29/2010 8:51 PM, David T. Lewis wrote:
> I suspect that you have discovered some combination of platform
> sources, configuration files, etc that breaks this, but the intent
> was to make the change in such a way as to provide backward compatibility
> even if all of the various platform sources were not updated immediately.

And to be honest, I think that's a mistake. It leads people to 
implementing protocols only partially. For example, I hadn't even 
noticed that John added ioMicroseconds(). If the compile had generated 
an error, I would have fixed it and moved on. The way it's now we 
shipped 4.0.1 with a broken microseconds clock. I don't like that.

It is the nature of people working asynchronously and at different 
schedules that there may not be consistency about what the status for 
head is in each platform. Compile errors point out what you're still 
missing, that's their purpose. If you run head, you run the risk that 
something's still missing. If you need something stable, we have tags, 
we have file releases, use those. The latest head may or may not be 
functioning. If it doesn't you can help fix and improve it.

Head is the bleeding edge of development, why would anyone expect that 
to work flawlessly and why should we try to pretend that?

Cheers,
   - Andreas