package shepherding

[Bart Martens]

On Tue, 2004-03-09 at 11:15, Alexander Larsson wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-03-05 at 16:28, Leonard den Ottolander wrote:
> 
> > > I don't remember the last time I
> > > actually had time to do a bugzilla query.
> > 
> > Here. That's what I mean. Shouldn't developers at least have some time
> > to spend on hunting bugs? A few hours a week? There have been occasions
> > where I reported serious issues (being crashes in important parts of
> > prominent software), and still the developer did not approach me for
> > more details but after some serious nagging on my part. Do I really have
> > to chase after developers on the mailing lists or in IRC if I already
> > filed in bugzilla? Hey I don't mind, but you should know that this is a
> > two way street.
> 
> If I spend a few hours more on quering bugzilla bugs, that just means I
> won't be reading incomming bugzilla emails for those few hours, and
> incoming bugs will be ignored. If someone bugs me on irc about their
> favourite bug then someone elses favourite bug gets ignored. 
> 
> Of course we have to make sure we spend our time wisely on bugfixes,
> feature work, communications and everything, but at the end of the day,
> if there isn't enough hours to get things done, they won't get done.
> Good scheduling only gets you so far.
> 
> > > One could say its the fault of management that there aren't 10x as many
> > > engineers as we have now so we'd have time to fix more things.
> > 
> > Twice as many would be enough. But seriously, if you have just a few
> > people who can spend their time on hunting bugs that would already make
> > a *big* difference.
> 
> Yes. So, please, people on this list, fix a bug today!
> 
> > > However, I very rarely see anyone fixing any of the non-trivial bugs I
> > > own (and I own thousands of them, so I wouldn't mind some help).
> > 
> > Part of this problem is communication. You can't expect (most) outsiders
> > to fix difficult bugs in software that you are supposed to be the
> > authority on. This means that if you want others to make non trivial
> > fixes you will have to communicate some of your knowledge of the
> > internals of "your" software, or wait for someone to come around that
> > already has that knowledge.
> > 
> > Another approach would be to set up work groups of a few people
> > attending to a certain package. But that again is a management issue.
> > And it would still require the developer to have/take time to
> > communicate with these people.
> 
> I agree with what you say, and communication is important. But you make
> this sound so easy, we (i.e. the developers) just have to communicate
> more.
> 
> It seems its always the fault of the developer when something isn't
> ideal. The developer should just write more devel docs, should just
> write more docs, should just fix more bugs, should just communicate with
> the community more, should just add that new important feature. 
> 
> Why isn't it never the fault of the person who wants to fix a difficult
> bug that he didn't spend enough time trying to understand the code,
> instead of the developer not spending enough time writing docs for
> something that probably only that person needs.
> 
> I'm not saying developers should never write docs, never fix bugs, never
> communicate or whatever. What i'm saying is that writing good software
> needs a lot of work, in many areas, and developers do all sorts of
> things. Hopefully developers have a good view of the "global" state of
> their project and can spend their time where it gives best results.
> Whenever you're on the side that "complains" about the developer not
> having done something you only focus on that specific thing, and it
> seems ridiculous that the developer hasn't done this simple small thing.
> However, you need to step back and think about all the enourmous amount
> of things the developer has done instead, and that perhaps he even made
> the right prioritization when he chose to not spend his time on your
> issue.
> 
> > > I may be a pessimist, but I doubt anyone would read any such docs.
> > 
> > Some people read docs. Then a lot don't. But you can't expect people to
> > read information that has not been written down...
> > 
> > All in all I am not arguing that all progress on developing new software
> > features should be stopped. But I do think bug hunting and squashing is
> > an essential part of QA. Developers should have/take (more) time to
> > either do it themselves or help out others who are willing.
> 
> We do already spend time fixing bugs, and it is an essential part of QA.
> However you seem to want us to spend more time on that than we currently
> do. The hard question is then: What would you want us then to not do
> instead?
> 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>  Alexander Larsson                                            Red Hat, Inc 
>                    alexl at redhat.com    alla at lysator.liu.se 
> He's a suicidal voodoo matador who hangs with the wrong crowd. She's a 
> transdimensional gypsy lawyer with someone else's memories. They fight crime! 
>