Re: [Qemu-devel] Norton Ghost crashes with page fault for me too.

[Herbert Poetzl]

On Tue, Jun 14, 2005 at 01:51:10PM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
> From: "Henrik Nordstrom"
> 
> 
> >> The best that many can do is test qemu and report problems when they are
> >> found.
> >
> > Then you have to accept that the developers do the best they can in their 
> > interest for the benefit of all.
> 
> Generally, the way open source works is that a bug that directly effects a 
> developer, gets fixed.  They get annoyed enough they stop what they are 
> doing and fix it.
> 
> A bug that directly effects code they have written, might get checked into.
> 
> If it's a bug they can live with or work around, it doesn't get fixed.  And 
> probably not reported, for that matter.
> 
> If it's a bug that effects an OS that they don't use, it gets ignored. 
> (Hence, the Windows builds were broken for a long time and nobody noticed it 
> or if they did notice, didn't bother to fix it.)

well, sounds sane to me, or do you fix your
neighbors broken kitchen sink, just because
you heard him complain about it, instead of
fixing your own?

> >> But that's no excuse for bug reports to just vanish into the void. 
> >> Without
> >> an awknowledgement or somebody writting it down as a bug in qemu that 
> >> needs
> >> to get fixed eventually.
> >
> > There rarely is a void these days. If you send a bug report to a public 
> > mailinglist then it
> 
> That makes the very very large assumption that the developers deliberately 
> go looking through the back message archives for bugs that haven't been 
> fixed.

if there _are_ good reasons for them to do
so, they'll probably do it ...

> After a couple days, people just forget about reported bugs.

and real bugs pop up again and again ... which
is a very good method to filter real bugs from
coincidential issues ...

> >   b) Other people later having the same problem quite likely finds it in 
> > the archives and refers to it when reporting the same issue again if it 
> > still isn't fixed.
> 
> Similar bugs can show up in different ways.
> 
> Even when a bug does show up repeatedly, and effects many people, doesn't 
> mean anybody cares to look into it.

so?

> It just turns into one of those consistant bugs that everybody knows about 
> but no longer think of as a bug.  It becomes a 'feature' or a 'quirk'. 
> "It's just the way qemu does things" kind of mental shift.
> 
> The cd changing bugs are excellent examples.
> 
> They've been around for so long that most people in here no longer even 
> think of them as bugs.  They are just simply quirks in qemu.  And because 
> they are no longer 'bugs' but 'quirks', nobody even thinks to look into it.
> 
> Never mind whether they would find the bug or be able to fix it.  It's been 
> around so long that they don't even *think* of it as a bug anymore, so they 
> don't even *think* to look at it.
> 
> (I"m not saying the cd changing bugs are absolutely critical.  Yes, it does 
> prevent some OS's from being installed!  But it doesn't crash qemu, etc.  It 
> does show how a bug can stop being thought of as a bug.)

if somebody cares enough, s/he will fix it or
make sure that it gets fixed ... whining is
probably the worst way to achieve this ...

> > So even if there is no official bugtracking tool (which depending on the 
> > developer situation can be good or bad) the report isn't really lost.
> 
> Technically, yes, it does get archived.
> 
> But effectively it gets lost because it's no longer immediately visible as a 
> bug.  You have to specifically go looking for bug reports through the 
> archives.  And then go looking through the messages again to see if it's 
> been fixed.  (Either partially or fully.)
> 
> 
> Mailing lists can be very convenient.
> 
> But they also make it easy for things to get essentially lost.  If something 
> isn't in a recent message, then your brain just tends to forget about it 
> after a few days.

you are free to collect and prepare the bug
reports for them, just create your own page
with a list of (for you or others) relevant
bugs and possible fixes/workarounds. I'm pretty
confident the developers will make good use of
this page (if you do the collecting part) and
a bunch of issues will get fixed pretty fast ...

ah, and don't forget to announce it on the ML

best,
Herbert

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