Re: [Gzz] [Fwd: Bug report]

[Tuomas Lukka]

On Mon, Jun 30, 2003 at 12:54:12PM +0300, Hermanni Hyytiälä wrote:
> > Umm - a comment about your bugreport: you should really narrow it down
> > to a really short java program that you can send them, i.e. 10 lines of 
> > java, showing that on SUN's jdk it produces output XYZ and on kaffe, output 
> > FOO
> > and that FOO is wrong according to the docs.
> 
> IMO, partly true. I really wanted describe how&when&why the bug was
> discovered. I think adding 10 lines of simple java code is *optional*
> (not mandatory) in the bug report since the authors of code can *verify*
> the bug report's result by coding those 10 lines easily.
> 
> I think that how&when&why concept is more important in a bug report than
> 10 lines of code representing a wrong functionality. But, OTOH, 10 lines
> can be included if one wants so ;).

I disagree completely. This is an arrogant attitude which I really wish
people who send me bug reports didn't take.

Here's again the numbers stuff: if the developers get 100 bug reports
a day, do you think they prefer to read through the short story of discovery
or just fix it?

Most bug reports are false. If the authors had to code 10 lines for each bug 
report
to make sure that it's true, or install large packages to test it &c, then
it would just not be feasible - they'd spend all their time doing that.

Doing the 10 lines is very little work for you, because you now know what
it's about but for them it's much more since they have to start thinking about 
this --
while not even being sure whether you found a bug or have just misunderstood 
this.

Basically, if I get a bug report, I'd like to see

1) what the bug is
2) why it is a bug
3) example code so that I can *duplicate* the bug easily on my 
machine/environment
   or see that my later changes have already fixed it
4) exact configuration
5) (optional but strongly encouraged) What this bug affects - your internal 
code / 
   some important package &c
6) (optional) potential fix

Adding the java code is optional only if you cannot, for some reason, 
make that code (i.e. you haven't found a short program that duplicates
the problem or you are not a coder).

        Tuomas