Rule for upgrading

Massimo Dentico m.dentico at virgilio.it
Mon May 10 11:32:50 PDT 2004


"Francois-Rene Rideau" <fare at tunes.org> wrote:
>
> OK, I admit I have made a big mistake and been a bad cliki maintainer.
> 
> Now, if you detect that something is wrong with cliki,
> you shouldn't wait "2/3 days" to tell me.
> I might not be reading at cliki everyday,
> but I'm still very much willing to fix it (or at least restart it)
> if you tell me it's broken.
> However, since I don't read it everyday, especially when I'm on the move,
> you should TELL ME that it's broken, *immediately*:
> drop me personal email; instant message on MSN or whatever;
> page me with a SMS on my phone.

Ok, first let me explain: I initially thought it was a net glitch and
probably it was (the entire domain was not reachable). Then I thought
you were working on Cliki.

I have also some other serious personal problems to pay attention in this
period.

 
> Alternatively, learn to log in as "tunes" to kill and restart the cliki.

Logging in as "tunes" is not a problem.

As I explained in my previous post, I'm not proficient with Common Lisp
so I'm not able to decide if a restart is sufficient or, as consequence
of an update/modification, a bug needs to be fixed to be in a *safe*
state (no data loss and/or monstrous resource consumption) before a
restart.

Also, to a knowledgeble Common Lisp programmer is obvious how to do
these simple things reading the docs that come with the package, but to
someone ignorant and with not so much time like me is not. Where can I
learn about this subject?

Alternatively, what about a trivial script with a web interface
to restart Cliki? If it is a not so simple activity (time consuming),
simply say so.


> But don't just sit there and expect things to be fixed magically.
> They won't.

Well, it is not exactly so: when was decided the transition from our
old Wiki to Cliki, much more people than usual (for this project)
collaborated (myself included: I wrote and ran a script to split the
glossary into individual nodes). The same for the content: it is
updated both by casual users and constantly by Tunes members.

 
> Current status:
> there is a coding bug in my patch, that causes for some requests
> calls to gf cliki:page-pathname with arguments (nil :version :newest),
> which has no defined methods. Cliki enters the debugger for each thread.
> Nobody comes to release-foreground those threads or whatever. Too bad.
> Cliki runs until it starves out of space. Nobody is there to fix it.
> 
> Now, if only you'll report bugs, they will be fixed faster.
> If you can have detailed bug reports, they will be fixed even faster.
> 
> Once again, sorry for the bad service. Please help me improve it.

Moral: if you set up the things so that the entrance cost to help
is low, much more people is willing to help (remember: we are
volunteers with scarce time at disposal, exactly as you). The need
to be proficient with Common Lisp for even the most trivial thing
is not exactly a low entrance cost.

Regards.

--
Massimo Dentico





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