On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:33:58 +0100 Jörn Engel joern@logfs.org wrote:
On Tue, 13 November 2007 15:18:07 -0500, Mark Lord wrote:
I just find it weird that something can be known broken for several -rc* kernels before I happen to install it, discover it's broken on my own machine, and then I track it down, fix it, and submit the patch, generally all within a couple of hours. Where the heck was the dude(ess) that broke it ?? AWOL.
And when I receive hostility from the "maintainers" of said code for fixing their bugs, well.. that really motivates me to continue reporting new ones..
Given a decent bug report, I agree that having the bug not looked at is shameful. But what can a developer do if a bug report effectively reads "there is some bug somewhere in recent kernels"? How can I know that in this particular case it is my bug that I introduced? It could just as easily be 50 other people and none of them are eager to debug it unless they suspect it to be their bug.
It's relatively common that a regression in subsystem A will manifest as a failure in subsystem B, and the report initially lands on the desk of the subsystem B developers.
But that's OK. The subsystem B people are the ones with the expertise to be able to work out where the bug resides and to help the subsystem A people understand what went wrong.
Alas, sometimes the B people will just roll eyes and do nothing because they know the problem wasn't in their code. Sometimes.