[AWS] Test program to showcase the AWS.SMTP.Client.Send leak

[Thomas Løcke]

On Sat, Aug 6, 2011 at 7:33 PM, Pascal Obry <pascal at obry.net> wrote:
> But it is even easier to fix in the application. Using a valid SMTP server
> there is no leak, not a very bad bug I would say.


Well, the SMTP server may not always be in the hands of the
application, or some system administrator may add a faulty one by
mistake. There might be a chain of SMTP servers to try, and if one of
them contains a minor error, the application is going to leak, yet the
admin may not know so until it's too late. There is an abundance of
possible scenarios.

In my humble opinion, all memory leaks are bad. But then again, I am a
complete valgrind fanatic.  :D


> Anyway, the GNAT GPL
> packaging is done once a year, that's the rule and I can't change that. This
> is true for AWS and all others GNAT add-ons.


I do understand that this is out of the hands of the AWS developers.
I'm just a bit of a whiner. I hope you can forgive me for that.


> Note that bugs are fixed regularly (and more serious than this one) in GNAT
> and other packages and nothing gets repackaged. Not a big deal, use the
> repository sources.


The fact that AdaCore treats bugs that are _more_ serious than memory
leaks with such a cavalier attitude boggles me. Sure, we can use the
repository sources, but why have an official release at all then?
Bugfix releases could just be minor updates, such as going from 2.10.0
to 2.10.1. Then the yearly releases could be new features or other big
additions that rolls the major version number, ie. 2.10.0 to 2.11.0 or
what have you. A simple system that works well for a lot of projects.

I happen to like AWS a lot, and I think it deserves more than just
sitting @ version 2.10.0 for a full year with X amount of unfixed
known bugs. It's not like there's a README accompanying the download,
telling new users: "Beware! Unfixed KNOWN bugs ahead! Please use
repository sources!"

Well, luckily I trust the AWS developers to such a degree, that I'll
just start using the repository sources instead. Once again I'd like
to thank you for a great piece of software, and I hope you'll one day
convince the good people at AdaCore that their current release model,
to be blunt about it, sucks.

:o)
Thomas