🚀 go-pugleaf

Michael writes:
>    GNU maintainers generally don't have time to figure out which bugs
>    have been fixed by the latest release and which have not--so save
>    us the trouble, and don't send in bug reports for old versions of
>    programs.

Francois Pinard writes:
> It is *preferable* to send bug reports for latest versions, I agree.
> However, we should not make this a must.  All bug reports should be
> welcome, whatever the version they apply to.

Thank you!  I had felt that I had been unjustly rebuked!  I had
prepared a very flameful response, but then let it sit unmailed while
I cooled down.  If nothing else this short note from Francois has done
some good PR for the FSF with me.

> No user should fear reporting problems with GNU products, or feel

Which is exactly what I felt after getting that response.  I had
pulled tar-1.11 just a few days before.  It *was* the newest and most
current version at that time.  And it looks like 1.11.1 was released
almost immediately after that!

On prep.ai.mit.edu:~/pub/gnu/
-rw-r--r--  1 14910    wheel      280367 Sep 15 19:46 tar-1.11.1.tar.Z

So I thought I *did* have the latest version but figured that since
the problems were pretty obvious that there must be something better
cooking somewhere.  (Notice from my bug report that I did ask if there
was a newer version.  I was thinking of the maintainers current copy,
however. :-)  I also offered to supply patches to fix the problems
that I had found.  I want brownie points for that.  :-)

I was previously unaware of the news group gnu.utils.bug or I would
have known about the release of the newer version while I was
debugging the old one.  I will keep an eye on it from now on.

Simple pointers like the one I got to look in that news group go a
long way!  I might suggest putting that in the README file which is
where I got the bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu address.  I am not sure
where it goes, probably to thousands, so please pardon the intrusion
everyone.

Meanwhile, keep up the good work!

Bob Proulx
"Testing out 1.11.1"
rwp@fc.hp.com