[3693] in BarnOwl Developers
Re: [barnowl] Perl logging (#54)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey Hutzelman)
Sat Jan 4 19:47:48 2014
From: Jeffrey Hutzelman <jhutz@cmu.edu>
To: barnowl/barnowl
<reply+i-1212393-313039cd867d577b5721069e10330b49395747f8-4475081@reply.github.com>
Cc: jhutz@cmu.edu, barnowl/barnowl <barnowl@noreply.github.com>,
barnowl-dev
email-only account
<barnowl-dev@mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2014 19:47:29 -0500
In-Reply-To: <barnowl/barnowl/pull/54/c31586637@github.com>
On Sat, 2014-01-04 at 11:37 -0800, Jason Gross wrote:
> > No, you’re missing the point. It’s not about appropriate names, it’s
> about compatibility. Someone who upgrades BarnOwl without carefully
> reading the release notes should not suddenly find that their messages
> which used to be logged now get dropped on the floor.
>
> I'm not sure that having such a "compatibility mode" is worth the
> trouble.
In systems that other people are going to use, satisfying the principle
of least surprise is usually worth the trouble. Taking a software
update(*) and then discovering weeks later that messages you thought
were being logged were actually being dropped on the floor would be
_very_ surprising. Just creating new directories would be less
surprising, but the _least_ surprising thing to do would be to continue
to log to the existing place, without any unexpected change in behavior.
-- Jeff
* This doesn't mean "gee, I think I'll try a new barnowl; let's see what
all
cool things it does. It means unattended-upgrades installing a new
version
that appeared in the apt repository overnight without you even
noticing.
