Re: Disappointed by GNUstep

[Wolfgang Lux]

Hi Fred,

> There are bugs in GNUstep and probably there always will be. We don’t get 
> enough testing, usage, for GNUstep gun applications, so many bugs may go 
> unnoticed for a long time. At least the first bug you mention below is 
> something I already fixed on Christmas. I am surprised that you are still 
> seeing it. We may be slow at detecting bugs, but many issues get resolved 
> shortly after being reported.

maybe I should have spelled it out more clearly. I don't have that much of a 
problem in general with my code crashing when I update to the latest version of 
the tree, as long as isn't something that could easily be avoided. And I've 
spent/wasted too much time debugging memory management related bugs in 
Objective-C code (mostly outside the GNUstep libraries) so that I've lost 
tolerance for such bugs these days. Therefore, I keep pestering people with 
requests to switch to ARC when encountering such bugs.

Now regarding your fix it turns out I had missed it because I hadn't update my 
local from github since early December. But then updating the code, I'm afraid 
your fix doesn't really solve the issue. The main problem is that _selectedItem 
may be dead after the statement
  ASSIGN(_menu, menu);
in method setMenu: and the code may setState: on _selectedItem in the 
selectItem: method when altersStateOfSelectedItem is true for the pop up 
button, which, unfortunately, is the default since commit 7023c7d. :-(

I've committed another fix to resolve this issue. I had intended to create a 
pull request for this, but I've accidentally committed it to master right away. 
Feel free to update the code as you see fit.

> As for the second issue, this is the first time I hear about it. And as you 
> wrote it is probably fairly easy to fix after being able to reproduce it. Is 
> there any standard GNUstep app that demonstrates this issue or do I have to 
> construct one myself.

No, it doesn't happen for a standard GNUstep application. And while it is 
reproducible for me (in at least one case), it seems rather difficult to narrow 
it down. I've tried to come up with a minimal example today, but without luck 
so far (the examples were apparently too minimal). In fact, the split view may 
just be a red herring and the real problem may be lurking elsewhere. So don't 
bother trying to come up with a test case yourself.

Wolfgang