Re: dicussion about patches ... ignoring patches make motivation toprovide them fall
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> writes:
> Some few maintainers are obnoxious and anti-helpful. All of these
> have bugs which have had a patch attached to them for a long time
> without mantainer comment (not even 'no, this patch doesn't work
> because X'). However, not all such bugs reflect anti-helpful
> maintainers; many reflect MIA, busy, or distracted maintainers, so
> one has to poke them to find out whether one gets a rude reply, no
> reply, or a "thank you" reply.
I think you have omitted another pattern between your two cases; or
perhaps you haven't and I just want to make it more explicit.
My normal practice is not to reply to bug reports if they seem
complete and don't need any special attention. This is unqualifiedly
true if the report is severity normal, minor, or wishlist. For
important bugs, I make a strong effort to understand them and try to
keep my packages with as few as I can. For normal bugs, it depends on
whether the fix is easy to install, what my time available is, and so
forth. For RC bugs, I try to upload a fix ASAP, except in unusual
cases. I try to always respond to RC bugs, even if I am not likely to
fix it right away.
(I don't pretend that I perfectly *implement* this practice in every
detail, of course; I make mistakes as much as the next guy.)
So someone who sends a normal severity bug report, which is complete
and clear, will not get a reply unless I discover that I don't
understand it, when the time comes to look at it in detail, and I will
not assume that the bug is very important. I trust the submitter to
say "this bug is blocking my work, can you give it more attention" in
the cases where this matters to them.
So a mere non-reply does not, it seems to me, connote anything bad; it
may simply mean that the bug report is complete in itself, and well
get attention when I decide I have the attention to give it. If more
than this is required, more needs to be asked.
An example was Justin Pryzby, who recently sent email to a number of
bugs he cared about, asking if the bug was likely to be fixed for
etch. This was helpful, and I replied or fixed the bug right away
after getting it, even for a severity minor bug. Why? Because
someone had said, "hey, can you attend to this now."
I don't think my practice is obnoxious or unhelpful...
Thomas
Reply to: