Brandon McCombs wrote:
Howard Chu wrote:
The fact that we do point releases is exactly how previous versions get supported. When a bug is found in e.g. 2.3.27 and the fix is released in 2.3.28, then if you want the fix you have to install 2.3.28.
How exactly do you expect people to receive fixes, if not by installing them when they are available?
There is a difference between knowing definitively whether the OP was running into a bug and by upgrading it would be fixed compared to just telling him he has to upgrade because some bugs have been fixed (not necessarily the one he is running into, if he is even running into one) and that he won't get much or any help unless he does the upgrade. The knee-jerk reaction on this list is usually to tell people to upgrade. That works great if it can have a good chance of fixing the problem but that doesn't usually seem to be the reason people are told to upgrade.
Aaron's response already covered most of the bases http://www.openldap.org/lists/openldap-software/200804/msg00153.html
It wasn't specified whether the OP was running into a bug or not. He was just told to upgrade. I'd prefer to know ahead of time if it was me that an upgrade would actually fix it instead of going thru the time of doing it and not fixing it and it having the chance of breaking something else.
It isn't just with this guy's post either. I see "You are way out of date. You need to upgrade." answers to a lot of questions on here. Obviously the best case scenario is for everyone to run the latest code but that isn't always possible
At least some rationale ahead of time for upgrading would be nice in my opinion because I got the impression it is just used as an excuse to not help someone. I'm the type to ask 'why' before I'm told to do something to better evaluate the proposed solution. That may very well be the wrong impression but it is one that was easy to arrive at.
The OP was already pretty certain that they were not doing anything out of sequence or otherwise wrong. A number of posts were made asking for more details, to ascertain whether some simple misconfiguration may have been at fault. The only thing left is to eliminate any possible bugs. Also, if there's a previously-unknown bug and it isn't fixed in any of the later patches, an upgrade is still required.
The Project's policy on patches is (and has always been, since 1998 when the Project was founded) as noted here:
http://www.openldap.org/devel/contributing.html
patches Each software change should be concise, self-contained, and made against up-to-date source code. <<
Changes are only made against the latest code. Period.
If you think that's a bad policy, (1) you probably have no idea what's really involved here and (2) you're welcome to prove otherwise on your own time. Nobody on the Project has time to retread old ground.