Re: Dealing with upstream issues

[bokr]

Hi zimoun, et al,

On +2022-06-28 18:25:05 +0200, zimoun wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 at 14:31, Maxime Devos <maximedevos@telenet.be> wrote:
> 
> > You often close bugs with as rationale: ‘no response since X months,
> > hence closing’, so it seems to me that you would simply close bug
> > reports if the bug reporter is gone.
> 
> [...]
> 
> > That's the issue I wanted to highlight -- issues are closed before
> > being fixed when the the reporter disappears (and hence, cannot provide
> > "more info", or has other things to do than provide a fix by
> > theirselves), even if the bug is understood.
> 
> These claims are inaccurate.  And it appears to me unfair considering
> all the amount of time I personally spend on old bug triage; instead of
> doing other (funner?) things.
> 
> My workflow dealing with old bugs is: pick one and read the report (and
> the complete thread, if any), then,
> 
>  1. the report provides enough information for reproducing; I try to
>     reproduce myself and report more info, and then I try to collaborate
>     for fixing or closing.
> 
>  2. the report does not provide enough information to understand what
>     the bug is about or to find a way to reproduce; then I ask more info
>     – sometimes my reply is even the first one, then,
> 
>     a) an answer is back so it is similar as #1.
>     
>     b) no answer after 2 or more weeks, so I try to determine if the
>        report is actionable and if the next action is fine-grained
>        enough to be doable.  After 2 or more weeks, I ask again.
> 
>        Therefore, if a bug report after 2 or 3 years is not commented,
>        especially after 2 or more attempts to understand and ask for the
>        next steps without an answer back by the whole community, what
>        could be the action other than just close the report.
>

Nothing, except maybe special archiving, or tagging for indexing?

By bug closing time, you have typically produced the best summary
of the bug chase, with clues and tips and examples for reproducing
and links where to find more info, such as links to Ludo's
(particularly, but others too) debugging examles. ( Kudos and thanks :)

So it's a matter of making sure your valuable work is archived for
easy use in future bug chases, ISTM.

Of course, your posts /are/ archived in the mailing lists.
(I like the POP3 mbox-format archives, where it's easy
to grep the headers. I do wget -c <archive-url>
to make myself copies of selected mail list months,
so I can search offline and view with mutt.

What I'd like is something in the Subject: line
to make it greppable for /both/ what the bug is about
and how it was closed, i.e. bug status.

Maybe if a post that says "closing" could have
"[closing: <status>]" in the Subject: line, where
<status> could say "fixed upstream" or "unresolved"
or whatever (bikeshed for dev ideas?).

Then you could use "[closing: unresolved]" in the closing
post Subject: line for a case that withered from inattention,
(your 2b) but still looks suspicious (if you think so).

E.g. suspicious like an fseg that went away because
new linkage for an update made the bad write
clobber something still, but without fseg:
It would be misleading to mark that "fixed" IMO.
Maybe "disappeared" :)

Anyway, the idea is to make the Subject: line greppable for both
what the bug is about and its status when it was closed.

> Ultimately, nothing is perfect and people are doing their best with
> their resource at hand; at least, I do my best with the resource at my
> hands.  I would be more than happy if more people would try to sort,
> classify or fix the old bugs.  Maybe, you will join the effort ?
> 
> I stop now the discussion in this thread since I do not see what we are
> discussing.
> 
> Cheers,
> simon
> 
--
Regards,
Bengt Richter