Hi David.
I do not know what you mean by "a latent defect
in our test infrastructure"? Do you mean an existing unit test should
have caught the error? If so, I'm wondering why.
But, suspect you mean something else. If you did mean
an unit test should have caught it ... well, that is another great way
to contribute to Eclipse!
The thing that "caught" the error was in
our build and happened not due to any bug, but because Tycho "eclipserun"
plugin creates a "minimal runtime". Apparently not all "minimal
runtimes" demonstrate the error, but some do. So, would be hard for
any pre-existing test to have caught it.
I meant the Tycho eclipserun configuration. Alex’s change didn’t create a problem, it (sometimes) exposed an existing problem. We’re transitioning other services to be DS-based and this latent problem is sure to become exposed again.
> and we’ve driven away a contributor
I don't see that at all. If Alex decided to not contribute
any more, I don't think the reason was because he was "driven away".
I thought he got some good comments and suggestions, and up to him if he
wanted to continue. But, obviously, we did not want to leave in a change
that broke our build, and that of others (WTP later hit the same problem).
To some extent, it was "good luck" that it broke our build since
otherwise it might have broken other "minimal runtimes" and not
have been discovered for many more months.