Gentlemen, a call to arms!

[Matt S Trout]

chromatic wrote:
> On Wednesday 11 October 2006 18:11, Matt S Trout wrote:
>
>   
>> Let me clarify that.
>>
>> If there's a bug in a Test::* module, I'd love to see it fixed. But if it
>> breaks a test suite that is perfectly useful in terms of testing the module
>> in question so far as its' users and developers are concerned, it shouldn't
>> happen in a minor, lightly-announced point release.
>>     
>
> Ahh, that is a different story.
>
> I haven't seen much feedback on any of the development releases for software 
> I've worked on, anywhere -- but if I had confidence that people who cared 
> were actually using them and would provide information on successes or 
> failures, I might release them for a few distributions.
>
> Now, assuming that people were willing to give feedback, a better question 
> might be "Where would it be useful to announce these?"
>   
Hmm ... I've seen the same problem with development releases in a lot of 
cases myself. We have it relatively easy since we just kick the Cat + 
DBIC lists, and since major releases are reasonably regular but not 
*too* frequent we can usually get at least a couple of RCs tested.

Doesn't one of the CPAN search sites let you find people whose 
distributions are using a given module? Maybe they'd be a good first start?

In the case of Test::MockObject I'd definitely be willing to test dev 
releases myself; I always keep at least one machine with a pretty much 
empty site_perl and my working libraries in ~/perl so it's easy for me 
to do full installation tests for just this sort of purpose, so maybe 
the catalyst-dev list would be a good start? (and at the very least 
please mail one of my various published addresses, at the very least it 
means I lose my right to complain later :)

My apologies for coming out in full rant mode over this, I dunno about 
"Serious Real Developer", lets try "sleep-deprived cranky maintainer 
who's spent the day being whinged at by users" and I guess you can see 
why I was annoyed, notwithstanding that I really didn't respond to it as 
constructively as I could have done ...

-- 
     Matt S Trout       Offering custom development, consultancy and support
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