OpenEuphoria

1. I'll not be using RC 2 in the future

• Posted by FredRansom Dec 14, 2010
• 1191 views

I've used Euphoria for years.

I have a program called fileHunter that uses walk_dir in std\filesys.e. I use it regularly. I also use Eu 4 RC 1 with a legacy library. fileHunter compiles and runs well with this setup. I then installed Eu 4 RC 2. fileHunter compiled and ran, but gave totally wrong results. Thinking it might be the new library, I replaced it with the legacy library. Then it wouldn't even compile, claiming it couldn't find a clearly existing API entry. I was in the middle of a project and didn't have time to explore this problem further, so I dumped RC 2 and reloaded RC 1 from the backups and fileHunter compiled and ran beautifully. I am reporting this here instead of filing a bug report because RC 2, with no suitable upgrade path and too many errors, has become for me a dead issue.

A reasonable minimum upgrade path includes all of the old API, all of it working as before, plus additions for the new API and a text file identifying no-longer supported entry points as deprecated with suggestions for their replacement. I have about 30 programs written in Euphoria. Without a reasonable upgrade path, I cannot afford to upgrade.

I'll not be using RC 2 in the future.

3. Re: I'll not be using RC 2 in the future

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 14, 2010
• 1180 views

I'm glad that you got your application back up and running. As for the problem, it was discovered right after RC2 was released and was fixed promptly. The purpose of the RC releases is to give people time to try the application with their production applications and hopefully turn up any bug that remains. In this case, the RC has served its purpose. Any time you use Alpha, Beta and RC software there are going to be issues. With many products even after final has been released there are a ton of bugs. We are trying very hard to make this not be the case with Euphoria.

The development team has written and put into place literally over 3,200 tests in place that are run on a routine basis by multiple people on various platforms. Sometimes these tests are run many times in a give day during heavy development. When a bug is found, a test case is written that exposes the bug (most of the time, and certainly when it's a complex bug) to prove the bug exists and then a fix is made that proves #1 that the bug is fixed and #2 that the fix didn't break any of the other 3,200 tests.

This one that you found was one that slipped through the cracks. We hate for anyone to be affected by them, but it will happen

It's impossible to contain all of the old API. I believe the API you are speaking of is some of the old dos interrupt stuff that was in a recent ticket. DOS support was dropped and its API has been dropped as well. Think if Euphoria had been created back on the Comodore 64 (which is not far fetched! Languages still exist today that were!). Anyway, would you expect that there still be an active function in the documentation (even though it doesn't function) that would rewind the tape drive? Or set the seek of the tape drive to 32 minutes 18 seconds?

The only thing removed from Euphoria has been the DOS support and that was well discussed on the forums. As for things that have changed, we have not been diligent between the beta releases. The RC releases contain notes as to what has changed, what has been removed and suggested replacements as you make reference to. Section 19 of the manual lists the release notes for each version (man:relnotes).

I understand that you are frustrated by RC2 and the problems it caused with the Dir() bug and the old Win32lib not working. The Dir() bug has been fixed and the new Win32Lib available on the Win32Lib SF.net site works great under 4.0.

I do hope that you will give 4.0 final a try.

Jeremy

5. Re: I'll not be using in the future

• Posted by jeremy (admin) Dec 14, 2010
• 1203 views

I'm happy to hear that and I'm glad you're still willing to try the new version. Thanks for your bug reports and help making RC2 better.

Jeremy