Perl patches (was Re: shar 3.49 (part 2 of 2))

[Steve Simmons]

xanthian at zorch (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
> There is sufficient precedent, John.  Or have you forgotten the initial
> release of Perl, followed instantly by 26-some patches?
> 
> It was along about patch 20 that I realized I would never, for love or
> money, write a line of Perl code, I was that angry at Larry's release
> methods.

merlyn at iwarp.intel.com (Randal Schwartz) writes:
> [[defends Larry, saying his 28 patches were done in a much
>   small number of batches]]

Without meaning to take sides, I think Randal has missed something.  When
the initial c.s.u release of perl came out, it was released *with* 26 or
so patches.  Not already at patchlevel 26.  The s.c.u release was the shar
files for patchlevel zero plus 26 patches.

I too was upset by this, and dropped a note to Rich and Larry.  To my
knowledge this has not happened again.

As for releasing many patches in batches, I kind of like it.  If you can
get things down to one feature per patch (I know, Larry doesn't do that)
it makes it easier to track which patch caused/cured a given problem.  A
release management issue, really.

Kent Paul Dolan also writes:
> It was along about patch 20 that I realized I would never, for love or
> money, write a line of Perl code, I was that angry at Larry's release
> methods.

Your choice, Kent.  Respectfully, it's your loss.  You should reconsider.
I didn't use perl until I hit a situation that couldn't be done reasonably
in awk/sed/etc.  It turned out to be easier than I expected.  As I told
the boss, tho, "it's heavily commented because it's write-only code."