R. Clayton (rclayton@monmouth.edu)
(no date)
A number of people have been experiencing mysterious core dumps that started
after the class directory updates a few days ago. In all cases the problems
were cased by mixing old versions of files people had copied into their own
directories with the new versions of files in the class directory. The
problems went away as soon as the old, obsolete files were deleted.
Although I understand the convenience behind making local copies of files, it
is a dangerous practice because its easy to mix old and new file versions, and
that usually results in disaster of a most baffling kind. This is particularly
true because I tend to update files often in response to requests (as I did
earlier this week), or as a reaction to the various things I see going on in
the project (as I've just done by modifying pa1-solo.dsk to emphasize the
points given in my previous message on program loading).
Even if you do manage to copy complete and consistent sets of files, you run
the risk of missing out on updates, which could cause problems when you submit
your code because I compile, link, and test your code against the files given
in the class directory.
If you really want to copy files, you should learn how to do it systematically
and automatically via makefiles. See the makefile in the misc directory for
urls to tutorials on make. The makefile itself also shows you how to get by
without copying files at all.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Fri Aug 23 2002 - 19:30:04 EDT