harbour 3.4 and png_init_io()

[Antonio Linares]

Not sure if this is the right place for tech support about Harbour 3.4.

I wasn't aware of Vikthor's fork, and now testing it, we have noticed the issue with png_init_io()

Is there any planed solution for it ? Should we solve it on our side ?

thanks

Antonio

[Aleksander Czajczynski]

Antonio Linares wrote:
> Not sure if this is the right place for tech support about Harbour 3.4.
>

Or if it's going to be official Harbour 3.4 at all, i don't know.
Personally i have no objections, to talk about Viktor's fork here. His
work is one of the strong foundations of Harbour-Project. For me only
practical problems arise, although i'm aware of his fork and even
imported some of his fixes to my Harbour source tree. I just didn't have
time to compile, use and test whole package. And you can easily see,
that list of changes there is huge.
I've seen that some users were confused about what "Harbour 3.4" really is.

> I wasn't aware of Vikthor's fork, and now testing it, we have noticed
> the issue with png_init_io()
>
> Is there any planed solution for it ? Should we solve it on our side ?

I suppose, you could submit a patch when you solve it. Or better using
git workflow, fork the repo, patch the thing and issue pull request to
the upstream.

Best regards, Aleksander Czajczyński

[Klas Engwall]

Hi Antonio,

3.4 is Viktor's fork. Nobody knows why he quit this project and started
his own. Nobody knows what his objectives are, there is no statement of
direction that I have been able to find. The links in his readme file
point 50/50 to this project and to his own. Nobody knows what the plans
for his fork are. And nobody knows why he and Przemek do not talk. We
only have Przemek's comment "You should ask Viktor about it. I haven't
talked to him about his fork." in a post from January:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/harbour-devel/ug3XVkvJQW0/MNK7GRyux5AJ

The only thing we know is that it is confusing as h*ll for many users
that there are now two different Harbours with the same name but
different version numbers, different directions and different issues.

Since we (the members of the Harbour-Devel and Harbour-Users newsgroups)
know nothing about Viktor's fork, we cannot answer questions about it.
Support requests and bug reports must be sent to Viktor himself or to
whatever newsgroup/mailing list he suggests. He does not answer support
requests regarding his fork in these newsgroups (except when he jumped
in about a week ago and commented to a user with build problems that
those problems were caused by mixing the two Harbour versions in the
same source tree).

When Viktor was still involved in "the orginal" Harbour Project, here,
he made it very clear that questions about other Harbour forks, like the
one included in MiniGui (IIRC) must be sent to the maintainers of those
forks, so I am sure he agrees that the same thing goes for his own fork.

Regards,
Klas

[Klas Engwall]

Correction ...

Searching further I found a comment from Viktor in this newsgroup:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/harbour-devel/ug3XVkvJQW0/PdE_A_dVnnMJ

"Internet communities are certainly useful, but there came
a point (few years ago) where this one became too much of
a burden to me. Working hard with diminishing benefits
makes crowds angry and suspicious while wanting more of it.
Both of above makes me feel bad and angry too. And the
cycle just becomes worse, till it feels a total failure.
I've found the resolution was to pull away from it."

"I still enjoy fixing (or reporting) bugs or making the
code better (or seldom fixing stuff that I need for
actual production work), so I keep doing it in my own
sandbox, without the burden of politics, management,
implied responsibility or the various other forms of
external pressure."

Regards,
Klas

[Antonio Linares]

Klas,

Many thanks for the explanations. 

It is very healthy that forks occur, but as you point, it may be confusing for the users. Anyhow as another follower of this list explained me, he has seen commits from Przemek in Viktor's repository, so to me thats a very good sign.

We have already provided Harbour 3.4 to our users (FWH). We are testing it actually and seems to be working real fine, as usual. Only the png_init_io() issue remains to be solved. 

I just wonder what to answer users if they ask about Harbour 3.3 ? Did it ever existed ? :-)

regards

Antonio

Regards,
Klas

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[Francesco Perillo]

It is very healthy that forks occur, but as you point, it may be confusing for the users.

Forks are good things, I agree.

 

Anyhow as another follower of this list explained me, he has seen commits from Przemek in Viktor's repository, so to me thats a very good sign.

Viktor pulls all (I think) the patches from harbour repository.

We have already provided Harbour 3.4 to our users (FWH). We are testing it actually and seems to be working real fine, as usual. Only the png_init_io() issue remains to be solved. 

Providing 3.4 to your users is.... well...  up to you... it's all open source and you can fork it yourself... the most interesting patches can also be retrofitted to harbour repository... but now the diffs are so many and sometimes so small and confusing that it may be a daunting task (for example changing http to https in every source files makes diff really difficult)

I understand Viktor decision to create a fork (or better, to be free to work without pressure and limits on his Harbour), what I don't agree with is the use of the Harbour name with the 3.4 release number... this can be very misleading.

But it is an open source project and he can do that....

[Antonio Linares]

Francesco,

We have finally decided not to provide Harbour 3.4 for the moment until the png issue is solved and it is tested by a group of our users (as I was not aware of this fork news). 

Anyhow, I do know Vikthor quality so I am sure there are almost no risks in using his fork sources.

regards

Antonio

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[Klas Engwall]

Hi Antonio,

> It is very healthy that forks occur, but as you point, it may be
> confusing for the users. Anyhow as another follower of this list
> explained me, he has seen commits from Przemek in Viktor's repository,
> so to me thats a very good sign.
>
> We have already provided Harbour 3.4 to our users (FWH). We are testing
> it actually and seems to be working real fine, as usual. Only the
> png_init_io() issue remains to be solved.
>
> I just wonder what to answer users if they ask about Harbour 3.3 ? Did
> it ever existed ? :-)

No. Maybe it was reserved for an upcoming stable release of 3.2 ... but
it is probably time to jump to 4.0 when that happens anyway.

Regards,
Klas

[Klas Engwall]

Hi Antonio,

> We have finally decided not to provide Harbour 3.4 for the moment until
> the png issue is solved and it is tested by a group of our users (as I
> was not aware of this fork news).
>
> Anyhow, I do know Vikthor quality so I am sure there are almost no risks
> in using his fork sources.

I can agree with that (no risk). But if you provide it to your users in
the future, I hope you will make it clear to them that it is not the
same Harbour version as the one from harbour-project.org and that the
members of these newsgroups cannot answer questions about the fork.

Regards,
Klas

[Antonio Linares]

Klas,

Understood. Thanks for the explanation

regards

Antonio

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[Antonio Linares]

Klas and others,

Do you know where to post questions about Vikthor's fork ?

thanks

Antonio 

El jueves, 19 de junio de 2014 00:17:38 UTC+2, Antonio Linares escribió:

Klas,

Understood. Thanks for the explanation

regards

Antonio

2014-06-18 23:23 GMT+02:00 Klas Engwall <har...@engwall.com>:

Hi Antonio,

We have finally decided not to provide Harbour 3.4 for the moment until
the png issue is solved and it is tested by a group of our users (as I
was not aware of this fork news).

Anyhow, I do know Vikthor quality so I am sure there are almost no risks
in using his fork sources.

I can agree with that (no risk). But if you provide it to your users in the future, I hope you will make it clear to them that it is not the same Harbour version as the one from harbour-project.org and that the members of these newsgroups cannot answer questions about the fork.

Regards,
Klas

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Antonio Linares
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[Klas Engwall]

Hi Antonio,

> Do you know where to post questions about Vikthor's fork ?

AFAIK there is no such place. And reading between the lines in his post
from January, that I quoted earlier in this thread, I don't think he
would be interested in having such a place.

Regards,
Klas

[Aleksander Czajczynski]

Antonio Linares wrote:
> Klas and others,
>
> Do you know where to post questions about Vikthor's fork ?

I think for now, the preferred method is to use fork specific GitHub
issues page:
https://github.com/vszakats/harbour-core/issues/

Regards, AC

[Patrick Mast]

Hey Antonio,

Do you know where to post questions about Vikthor's fork ?

Maybe here:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vszakats/harbour-core/master/CONTRIBUTING.md

Patrick

[Antonio Linares]

Patrick,

many thanks :-)

regards

Antonio

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[Alexandre Cavalcante Alencar]

FYI,

Vicktor opened an issue 77 and sent a proposed fix for harbour/core today

https://github.com/harbour/core/issues/77

So, I think people are just exaggerating here