RE: Testing JDK bugs?

[Andrew Haley <aph at redhat dot com>]

Jeroen Frijters writes:
 > David Gilbert wrote:
 > > The theory is easy:  Mauve should test AN implementation against THE 
 > > spec.
 > 
 > Pardon me for beating my favorite horse again, but this assumes that the
 > spec is somehow more valuable than code and/or that the spec doesn't
 > contain bugs. In the real world both are buggy and users rarely care
 > about the spec, especially when their app works on the RI, but not on
 > our implementation.
 > 
 > Allow me to rebut another issue that often comes up: "We'll make it spec
 > compliant and when someone finds an application that depends on the RI
 > behavior then we'll copy that behavior."

That depends on whether or not we think the spec or some
implementation is buggy.  It is often possible to tell -- some
behaviours are just Obviously Wrong.  When it's not possible to tell,
we have to make a judgment call.

 > IMNSHO, this is actually a very dumb approach. It makes our
 > implementation worse than the RI in two ways:
 > 
 > 1) Apps coded against the RI (possibly) don't work out of the box.
 > 2) Apps coded against our implementation (and spec) run the risk of
 > breaking in the future when we randomly decide to start emulating
 > the RI instead of the spec.

Or, just as likely, the "RI" eventually gets fixed.  Should we have to
wait for that other implementation to be fixed before will allow
ourselves to fix ours?  That really would be dumb!

 > Of course, things aren't black and white and issues should be
 > decided on a case by case basis, but considering the spec holy

Beat that straw man!

 > is not doing anybody any service.

Andrew.