RE: Testing JDK bugs?

["Jeroen Frijters" <jeroen@sumatra.nl>]

David Gilbert wrote:
> The theory is easy:  Mauve should test AN implementation against THE 
> spec.

Pardon me for beating my favorite horse again, but this assumes that the
spec is somehow more valuable than code and/or that the spec doesn't
contain bugs. In the real world both are buggy and users rarely care
about the spec, especially when their app works on the RI, but not on
our implementation.

Allow me to rebut another issue that often comes up: "We'll make it spec
compliant and when someone finds an application that depends on the RI
behavior then we'll copy that behavior."

IMNSHO, this is actually a very dumb approach. It makes our
implementation worse than the RI in two ways:

1) Apps coded against the RI (possibly) don't work out of the box.
2) Apps coded against our implementation (and spec) run the risk of
breaking in the future when we randomly decide to start emulating the RI
instead of the spec.

Of course, things aren't black and white and issues should be decided on
a case by case basis, but considering the spec holy is not doing anybody
any service.

Regards,
Jeroen