reporting bugs in a helpful way [was Re: Want it? Give]
Brent Clark wrote, on 11/04/10 12:26:
Hiya
I came across this blog
http://ryanbigg.com/2010/04/want-it-give/
and I couldn't agree more with this person.
Please mention the gist of what someone is saying rather than expect
people to bring up the link in their $BROWSER. The subject you provided
looked too much like spam (even though it reflected the linked article).
But I would like to bring this a little more home, and make it in the
Debian sense.
I would like to encourage more people to run Debian Testing, get more
debugging, but more importantly, please try and get involved. Submit
your findings. Take the time to learn reportbug.
reportbug doesn't help you re-open a bug (bug #157283 from 2002 [1]) or
mark a bug as forwarded upstream (bug #579201 just reported by me [2]).
It is very good on providing version information of the package and its
dependencies but is let down by those omissions.
For anyone's information, the guide at
http://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control
provides information on marking a bug as reported upstream, re-opening a
bug report, and many more developer-oriented options.
You be surprised in the little contributions that help the greater and I
think its a satisfying feeling.
<To quote from the blog>
Dan Pickett also has similar advice on contributing back to Rails 3. He
makes a good point that if you are able to demonstrate that you have
contributed to Rails that it looks awesome on your CV / Resume.
I could not agree more on this. I know this, because it has worked in my
favour.
Everyones mileage may vary, but I believe whole heartily that the really
winner is Debian and the community.
Kind Regards
Brent Clark
There is more to it than that. Be constructive in bug reporting and
don't be afraid to ask for help in how to isolate the problem. If you're
prepared to ask how to perform a git-bisect of the kernel (for a kernel
problem that causes a reproducible error) or run the program under gdb
or its debug options to catch error behaviour, you can help solve a
problem with the kernel/program.
Even if you only report a difficult to reproduce problem with report,
the fact that the problem exists is made available to the package
maintainer and other users with at least the version of the package and
its dependencies included.
Arthur.
[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=157283
[2] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=579201
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