Re: important vs release critical bugs
>>>>> "Richard" == Richard Braakman <dark@xs4all.nl> writes:
Richard> If you think a bug is particularly important, then by all
Richard> means do whatever you can to fix it, or call attention to
Richard> the bug in some other way. Severity "normal" does not
Richard> mean "please ignore this bug until the sun goes out".
That sounds good in theory, but does it work in practise? I don't
think so.
I have a number of bugs, which I consider important, but not release
critical, that are at two years old. Some of these bugs should be easy
to fix, often I never received a single reply.
I don't have time to chase up the maintainer when he/she does not
reply to my messages...
As an example, have a look at #24082 - the upstream authors supplied a
patch. Approx one year later, I asked the maintainer: has the patch
been applied? No answer. Chances are, the patch is now meaningless, as
the maintainer has taken to long to reply... Or, perhaps it was
applied ages ago, but didn't solve the problem (I haven't checked this
within the last year, I try to use another non-free program instead).
Another bug, I consider important, but not release critical is #23193.
Never one reply. If the maintainer was unsure how to fix the problem,
then he could always have asked me, or debian-devel.
Or, bug #34752, which makes mailx unusable for large mail items
(segmentation fault). The longer it takes for the maintainer to
respond, the harder and more inconvenient it is for me to reproduce (I
may have deleted my test data ages ago).
Also, look at bug #22961, I think this should be easy to fix (it
involves a shell script), and while it is purely "aesthetic", I haven't
had any replies.
Not to mention documentation bugs that are two years old, eg
#29183...
My guess is #25653 and #25756 can be closed, will investigate later.
I could go on and on... Then there a fresh bugs in potato that look
like the might be following the same path. See #58757, for
instance. Then again, perhaps this bug *should* be important, oh
sorry, it is... (not sure if this package has been affected by the
last bug horizon or not, if this was discussed, then sorry, I missed
it).
Disclaimer: some of these bugs may have been fixed, I know some
haven't.
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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