[GRASS5] Re: [bug #3877] (grass) r.to.vect: severe memory leaks, I'm helpless

[Trevor Wiens]

Roger and Radim,

I don't really want to piss anyone off but this is my opinion. 

First, I searched the archives for the old archives and was unable to
find any references to r.to.vect halting the system. 

Second, if this is a problem that has come up repeatedly, this is an
indication that work is needed in this area. Probably updating the
documentation outlining this problem would be a good idea so someone
doesn't have to reply with more than "Look here" or "RTFM".

Third, as a former database programmer, I would say that when a
program fails, it should fail early, loudly (with abundant information
to help solve the problem), and nicely (not halting the system). AFAICT
Maciek was using r.to.vect as the program was intended, converting a
raster to a vector. If there are is some sort of artificial file size
issues, that should be clearly stated in the documentation, or better
yet the program should check is first and fail without wasting the users
time or computing resources. Based on these reasonable user and
developer based criteria, this is a bug. That said I don't know what the
issues are surrounding this process, but I took a brief look at the
vector specification in the developers documentation this afternoon out
of curiosity and I can't see how this conversion would need to be
written for point files where file size or even computing resources
should be an issue.

I appreciate the work that Radim has put into the vector portion of
GRASS. I'm sure he is busy just like everyone else, thus point 2 above.

Roger thanks for constructive suggestions. It is always a pleasure to
read your posts on any list; always helpful and constructive.

T
-- 
Trevor Wiens 
twiens at interbaun.com

The significant problems that we face cannot be solved at the same 
level of thinking we were at when we created them. 
(Albert Einstein)