Re: [boost] shared_ptr under OS X

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-23 16:26:17

Ben Artin wrote:

> Can someone explain exactly why this wasn't caught in unit tests? I
> am not sure I understand why we missed this, but I am pretty sure
> it's important that we try to avoid this happening in the future.

The Dirxion tests:

http://engineering.meta-comm.com/boost-regression/CVS-HEAD/developer/smart_ptr.html

are being run with inlining turned off.

The bug only manifests itself when inlining is on.

> Sure, bugs happen. My main point here is that we should make sure we
> learn something from them -- or, more importantly, that we should
> learn something from them *before* our users learn that Mac OS X
> releases of boost are not thoroughly tested.

The lesson here is that we can't test everything and that we must make a 
beta or an RC available earlier. We've had similar configuration-specific 
bugs before, and they weren't caused by platform-specific implementations. 
Alpha testing simply can't obviate the need for beta tests.