[time-nuts] GPS Outage

[Hal Murray]

martin.burnicki at burnicki.net said:
>> Strange that at least 3 independant firmware trees/development teams should
>> chose the same magic wk860.

> I don't find it strange. If the next firmware version is based on the
> previous version and none of the developers has stumbled across this
> potential problem earlier ... 

That sounds like poor software engineering.  Or poor engineering management.

The wk860 is supposed to represent the build time of the software so it will 
work for 20 years from when it was built rather than 20 years from when the 
10 bit week counter last rolled over or 20 years from when the constant was 
last updated.

That magic constant has to be pulled out to a module where it is visible 
rather than buried deep in some large module.  Then the recipe for releasing 
software has to update it, either by having a step in the checklist where the 
human does the edit or by running a script that does it.  (Yes, you have to 
start by having a formal procedure for releasing software/firmware.)


-- 
These are my opinions.  I hate spam.