On 05/01/19 20:46, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> One might have hoped that the Gnulib folks would know better, but >> ah well! Is there *really* no better feature test they could have >> chosen? > > I don't know. I guess they've done it for pragmatic reasons, I'd guess at expediency, over pure pragmatism ... doesn't alter the reality that it's bad software engineering, and likely to bite when I change the internal interpretation, to accommodate planned future enhancements to the related subsystem. > and because they really don't know (and don't want to know) too much > about MinGW. Someone told them this worked, so they picked it up. > Who knows? I guess the engineers at Nypro UK thought they were being pragmatic too, when they implemented their expedient modification, which ultimately led to the destruction of their Flixborough plant on June 1st, 1974, with the consequent loss of 28 human lives, severe injury to a further 36, and substantial damage to nearby residential property. As a Chartered Engineer, with 25+ years experience of writing software to control similar process plant, I really cannot condone the class of substandard engineering which this warning aims to, at least, bring to the attention of those who might do something about it. Okay, that may be an extreme example, and this particular case may never lead to such disastrous consequences, but as professionals, we simply cannot afford to be complacent. -- Regards, Keith. Public key available from keys.gnupg.net Key fingerprint: C19E C018 1547 DE50 E1D4 8F53 C0AD 36C6 347E 5A3F -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 836 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <https://lists.osdn.me/mailman/archives/mingw-users/attachments/20190106/fcb96f96/attachment.sig>
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