Subj : MakeNL bug with archived segments
To   : Andrew Leary
From : Michiel van der Vlist
Date : Sat Aug 12 2017 09:31:33

Hello Andrew,

On Friday August 11 2017 18:24, you wrote to All:

 AL> I have discovered an issue that can manifest itself when archived
 AL> segments are submitted to the next *C up the chain.  When archiving
 AL> the new segment prior to submission, MakeNL doesn't check to see if
 AL> the archive already exists.  The result is submission of an archive
 AL> containing the new segment, as well as an older one.

This phenomena is not limited to MakeNl. I have seen it with other 
nodelist/pointlist processors that use archives as well.

 AL> There are two solutions that I've come up with:

This is not really a bug in MakeNl as such. The problem is so common that I 
would classify it as PEBCAK.

A note in de Docs should solve that. One should simply clean out the working 
directory at regular intervals. If one suffers from an uncurable hoarding 
disease and MUST keep all the old junk, do it in a another directory, not in 
the working directory.

 AL> 1.  MakeNL check for an existing archive and remove it prior to
 AL> archiving the segment for submission. 2.  When uncompressing incoming
 AL> segment archives, compare file dates on all files unpacked and use the
 AL> most recent.

 AL> What do you think?

If you must solve this in MakeNl instead of educate the nodelist clerks, go for 
#1. That solves the problem at the source. #2 is just dealing with the 
symptoms.

 AL> I'm leaning towards number 2 first, as that will help in cases where
 AL> the lower level *C hasn't upgraded his version of MakeNL yet.

And make them lazy? Distributing software is cheap and easy these days. There 
is no excuse for *Cs to not use the latest version.


Cheers, Michiel

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