Uncomfirmed crash report (was Re: [OT] Computer news from Kassel)

[Wilhelm Sanke]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2010, Ben Rubinstein <benr_mc at cogapp.com> wrote:

> On 22/06/2010 16:01, Wilhelm Sanke wrote:
>
> > > Apparently he had taken a look at the Revolution bug database with its
> > > enormous lags in fixing even fatal bugs,  e.g. Report #8275 "Groups:
> > > Bugs and features ("last group" broken)?" of  Sept 16, 2009, which
> > > astonishingly is still listed as "unconfirmed" although it contains a
> > > recipe to crash Revolution with only 4 lines of script.
>
> Wilhelm,
>
> I share your frustration with bug reports remaining uncomfirmed for long
> periods, although I also agree with others (and perhaps you) that an
> absolutist approach of no-new-features-until-every-bug-is-fixed is not 
> sensible.
>
> However, taking a look at the report you mention, #8275, I can't find the
> recipe for crashing Revolution with only 4 lines of script.  There are
> references in that report, to another report "How to reliably crash 
> Rev 3.5
> and 4.0-dp3 with four script lines", but from various searches in 
> Bugzilla I
> am unable to find it.  Can you give me the report number?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Ben
>
> PS Thank you for taking the trouble to report issues in Bugzilla as I 
> know it
> takes effort and it is a service to the community.  But I would 
> recommend, to
> get the maximum value in return for your trouble, creating separate 
> reports
> for each issue so that each can be understood as simply as possible, 
> rather
> than creating one very long report that ties together several issues.

Ben,

Thank you for looking into this matter. You are certainly right when you 
recommend filing separate bug reports.

One thought that led me to put together a more comprehensive report is 
the assumption that at least some of the listed bugs are somehow related 
to each other. And, if someone finds out that "you can crash Rev with 
only four lines of script" this should definitely arouse the attention 
of the responsible members of the Rev team, irrespective whether the bug 
report is multi-faceted or concentrated on one single sub-point. The Rev 
team should be competent enough to deal with a number of related 
troubles at the same time, or deal with them step by step. I believe 
that they are basically capable to handle also complicated issues, they 
are not first-graders in computer science.

There were 5 to 6 more sub-points concerning groups I was going to add 
to that report, but  I had waited for a first response - which never was 
sent.up to now.

The four-liner is contained in point 5 of my bug report - see below - 
and the post I mentioned there

"How to reliably crash Rev 3.5 and 4.0-dp3 with four script lines"

was sent to the use-revolution list on August 26, 2009 - and can be 
found in the archives.


> 5. Groups belong to the factors in an already reported scenario for safely
> crashing Rev
>
> I have described this in detail in my recent post to this list "How to 
> reliably
> crash Rev 3.5 and 4.0-dp3 with four script lines". Here I just point 
> out that
> "group" is among the elements causing to crash Rev and refer you to my 
> original
> post for more details.
>
> The following script assumes that you have set the angle of img "test" 
> to an
> angle other than 0, that img "test" is ungrouped, and that img "Test" 
> belongs
> in the category of "Pre-PNGs".
>
>   "lock screen
>   select img "Test"
>   group
>   set the angle of img "Test" to 0"
>
> For the definition of "Pre-PNGs" see my above-mentioned post or the
> introduction of my stack
>
> <http://www.sanke.org/Software/MoreAboutMasksRev3.zip> in the text 
> brought up
> on the menu card from the topright introduction button.


Best regards,

Wilhelm Sanke