On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 11:27:12AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > Some hints to make the RC bug fixing job a little easier:
> > * There's no such thing as an unreproducible grave bug. Either it
> > breaks for everyone, or it doesn't. If the program is usable for
> > most people, it's not completely unusable.
> That means when e.g. gcc gives "Internal compiler error" on ARM that's
> not RC because it's no problem for most people???
Hrm? What's unreproducible about that?
"Doesn't build on arm" is a serious bug (even though it doesn't have a
"must" in policy..), not a grave one. It can be downgraded by deciding
that "actually, we don't support this package on arm at the moment".
> I think you mix two things:
> - Unreproducable bugs should be closed.
Only after appropriate investigation.
> - You must decide whether a bug that hits only some people should be
> considered RC.
You're thinking I mean "RC" when I say "grave". I don't. I'm only
referring to a particular class of "grave" bugs, at that: ones that make
the package completely unusable for everyone. Not that make the package
not work on some machine because of some strange obscure thing the user
did, or some faulty RAM or whatever. If you can't reproduce it after
going to some effort, then that bug doesn't rate the grave severity. It
may still be a bug though.
> Something like "if (arch == alpha) do 'rm -rf /* ' " is IMHO
> RC even though it only affects < 5% of our users.
That breaks the system, so is "critical" not "grave"... (And if it were
rm -rf ~, it'd be causing data loss, so would be in a different class
of grave).
> > * Serious bugs should be able to cite the "must" in policy that's
> > broken. If they can't, it's probably not a serious bug.
> And even when you can cite a "must" you can get flames that you mustn't
> file bugs... :-(
Heaven forbid that policy could possibly be wrong. If we had perfect rules
for everything, we'd have written a program to maintain Debian for us and
we'd all be on permanent holiday. As it is, take everything you see with a
grain of salt.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``_Any_ increase in interface difficulty, in exchange for a benefit you
do not understand, cannot perceive, or don't care about, is too much.''
-- John S. Novak, III (The Humblest Man on the Net)
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