[ic] Call for testers

[David Christensen]

Greetings interchange enthusiasts!

As we all know, UTF-8 support in interchange has been a bit of a mixed  
bag.  We aim to rectify this issue by identifying and fixing these  
issues, but we need people who are willing to test the latest and  
greatest versions of the fixes.  I have set up a specific github  
repository to track the changes (http://github.com/machack666/interchange-utf8/tree/utf8 
).  ***Please note that this code is considered *experimental* and  
should *not* be run on a production system at this point.***   
Nevertheless, if you have some spare hardware or spare cycles, or have  
a copy of your site that you can easily set up in a testing  
environment, we need your help.

Please note that all UTF-8-related development is occurring in the  
utf8 branch; `master' is just tracking interchange's existing CVS  
repository.

Acquire the code by issuing the following commands:

   $ cd where/you/want/your/repository
   $ git clone git://github.com/machack666/interchange-utf8.git
   $ cd interchange-utf8
   $ git checkout utf8

The build/install process should be identical to Interchange's CVS  
build instructions, so if you are familiar with that, you're good to go.

Issues which I believe are resolved:
  - the ever elusive utf8_safe_regex_workaround; aka Safe.pm require  
errors.  (And there was much rejoicing!)  I have tested the Safe fixes  
against perl 5.10, but we need to verify that the code functions in  
perl 5.8.8 and 5.8.9 as well.

Specific bugs/issues identified but still outstanding:
  - Vend::Charset errors in [calc] blocks in INIT_PAGE.
  - reports of PreFork fork bombs when MV_UTF8 is enabled.
  - issues with Fedora's perl 5.10 version.

Additional consideration/candidates for increased UTF-8 support:
  - GDBM support
  - Outgoing email

Testing criteria:
  - test all changes against perl 5.8.8, 5.8.9, 5.10, both threaded  
and non-threaded.
  - test against catalogs with have MV_UTF8 enabled.
  - just as important: we need to test against catalogs which use  
legacy encodings so we can verify that new changes do not break  
working code on your part.

Comments/questions/volunteers? :-)

Thanks,

David
--
David Christensen
End Point Corporation
david at endpoint.com
212-929-6923
http://www.endpoint.com/