[Courses] [Tools] Coordination tools: bug trackers and mailing lists

[Mary]

On Mon, Oct 03, 2005, Karine Delvare wrote:
> >    2.2 Find a bug that has been filed against a piece of software you
> >        use. (Don't forget, ask if you can't figure out how to search.)
> 
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=100518
> 
> >    2.3 See if you can replicate the bug described in 2.2. If not, why
> >        not? If so, can you see anything missing from the bug report?
> >        Tell us about it.
> 
> I cannot reproduce it. I don't have the same compilation options as the
> reporter, but I doubt they have anything to do with that. Now I'm
> impatient to know where the reporter's problem comes from :)

It seems to be a relatively new bug, filed July 2005, so it might still
be updated. If you're interested in following it, one of the things you
could do would be to add yourself to the Cc list for that bug, so that
you get a mail every time it updates. To do this, you need to have an
account on the bug tracker. Once you have made an account, type your
email address into the box labelled "Add CC" on that page, and press the
button further down the page labelled "Commit".

> Summary : Firefox is unable to download any file after being updated.
> Details : Whenever I try to download a file with Firefox (be it by
> clicking an url, right-clicking and save as, entering the file url in the
> urlbar...), I get this error message : "<to be inserted next time I see
> the error> ". Re-emerging firefox always solved the problem (it happened
> twice, and each time I closed Firefox while doing the second emerge, just
> to be sure).
> Reproducibility : not always.

This would be a good bug report, with one addition: the version number
or package number or similar so that the bug fixer knows exactly which
version(s) you saw the bug in. With Gentoo, it might also be useful to
include your architecture and compiler options.

While this suggestion might be annoying, it can be useful to make sure
that you don't destroy any buggy copies of software before reporting a
bug. Often the bug fixer will know of ways to get information that you
haven't thought of, or will ask particular questions to explore a
hypothesis (like "what if you click on this, and then do that?").
It helps them a lot, especially if you can see the bug and they can't,
to be able to get answers from you. As with anything about bug reporting
though, you're a volunteer, you don't *have* to spend time on things or
run buggy software just to help out. On the other hand, it does help fix
the bug...

As an example, see this bug:
http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14077 You'll notice that in a
lot of comments, the bug reporter finds that a particular file is
causing a bug to happen, and deletes that file. The bug fixer wishes
he'd kept a copy, so that the fixer could try and see what caused the
bug.

-Mary