frustration: mailing lists and bugzilla reports

[Rik van Riel]

(sorry for the late reply)

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Owen Taylor wrote:

> And the question is, what? "Why are you guys slacking off on RH
> bugzilla?" Hours in the day, basically. So we can bring you new and
> exciting GTK+, Nautilus, D-BUS, whatever features.
> 
> I wouldn't obsess about the *state* of a bug; yes, there is a general
> policy that bugs should be moved to NEW => ASSSIGNED,

I guess this would be another good task for non-programmer
volunteers:

1) determine, together with the reporter of the bug, how
   the bug can be reproduced

2) try to reproduce the bug with the latest upstream
   version of the program
    ==> if fixed upstream, mark the bugzilla with a
        request that the Fedora package be updated
    ==> if the bug is not fixed upstream, forward the
        bug request to the upstream package maintainers
        (eg the KDE or Gnome bugzilla)

3) if the bug was sent upstream, check on its status once
   in a while ... when it is fixed, ask the Fedora package
   maintainer to upgrade to a newer upstream version ;)

Some "bug sitting" (baby sitting style) could go a long way
towards improving the quality of the software ...

-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan