[Opensim-users] Yearly April 1 Reminder. Don't use Trunk in Production!

[Teravus Ovares]

Hey Everyone,

Teravus here with the yearly reminder that April 1st is coming up on
Thursday.    This isn't a flame thread so please if you do respond,
keep it civil, friendly and under 20 e-mail long.

Traditionally, individual OpenSimulator developers would add something
a little extra to the code this day.    The 'special addins' have
always been temporary and they've always been non-destructive.
They've also always only been in Development versions of
OpenSimulator.   They've never been in release versions.    No content
has been harmed in the making of April 1st.

So, this is the yearly warning to remember /NOT/ to use trunk in a
mission critical application.   If you do, there's a possibility that
trunk will eat your content..   not because of April 1st, but because
programming issues in general.   Trunk is, by definition, highly
untested.

Maybe nothing will happen this April.  As I agreed last year, I,
personally, won't insert any 'special addin' this April 1st, however,
since that agreement covers me only..   and, there are many other
developers and patch contributors..   In the off chance that something
does, I wanted to present a warning and some potential resolutions to
issues you might experience.

1. Don't use Trunk in Production!    Don't use Trunk in Mission
Critical applications.  (if you're following OpenSimulator closely, it
can still be easy to miss!)
2. If you ignore #1, and have issues, change the system time
temporarily.   I know that helped the stick-avatar 'special addin'
last year.
3. If 2 doesn't work, then you may have to bisec
(http://www.ru.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/v1.2.6/git-bisect.html)
whatever it is..   out using git.
4. Some of the time you can find a patch to the issue in our bug
tracker. (http://opensimulator.org/mantis/my_view_page.php)

Once again, this is the warning that April 1st is fast approaching.
If you're using trunk, this is an opportunity to scrutinize and get
more familiar with the code base.

Best Regards

Teravus