[m-dev.] for review: make HLDS dumps easier to use

[Fergus Henderson]

On 24-Sep-1998, Zoltan Somogyi <zs at cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote:
> 
> > I haven't had a look at anything except the log message.
> > But I think that since this new option is a new feature,
> > and particularly since it is something that is not important
> > for users, we should not include this in the forthcoming release.
> 
> As we discussed at tuesday's meeting, the freeze is essentially on hold
> until the debugging changes get committed, since they will require retesting.

I'm sorry that I didn't make it to Tuesday's meeting.
But I don't think it would be a good idea to put the freeze on hold.
Every new change requires effort to review and to test.
A lot of bugs are discovered not by running the test suites
but rather by one of the Mercury developers trying something
and noticing that it doesn't work.  The more time that we
have during which the system remains stable, and the longer
each change has been in before we make the release, the
better tested the system that we release will be.

This point is particularly strong for changes to things which are not
well covered by the test suite, such as HLDS dumps.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.