hair-pulling frustration

[Richard Gaskin]

Geoff Canyon wrote:

 > I'm just expressing frustration about barriers to reporting bugs.
 > For example, a login is required to file a bug...

...as it is for this list, which the bug system is being compared to.

Just about any publicly-accessible venue that displays user-generated 
content will either require some form of authentication, or be overrun 
to the point of uselessness by spambots.

Like this list and the forums, the account setup for RunRev's Bugzilla 
DB is just a one-time thing.  And like the forums, you can choose to 
have it remember your login, so from that moment forward you'll never 
need to log in again.


 > ...and the bug submission form all but requires an example stack.

"But" seems the key word there, because while it can sometimes be useful 
to submit an example stack it isn't a requirement.   Most of the reports 
there have no attachments at all, even those submitted by RunRev staff 
themselves.

All that's truly needed is any description of the issue clear enough to 
allow it to be reproduced by the maintainers.

Like nearly all bug reporting systems they suggest a step-by-step 
recipe, but sometimes that's not needed.  Many submissions are just a 
single line, like "Run this in the Message Box:  <some command>".

In some cases, like the report Dr. Hawkins referred to that Peter had 
submitted about breakpoints, the issue may elude a reliable recipe.  In 
that report many from both the community and RunRev have worked toward 
arriving at a repeatable recipe, yet even now there appears to be some 
disagreement as to whether the recipes there actually work.

But even in those cases, Ben, Kevin and others at RunRev have encouraged 
us to go ahead and submit the issue anyway.  Just include the best info 
you have, and the core team and the community can continue to add notes 
there as they work toward an actionable diagnosis.

When a recipe is truly elusive, that's when this list and the forums 
become very valuable:

By describing the issue among peers, we can solicit feedback from others 
who may have experienced what we're seeing, or something similar enough 
to be relevant, and together we can work toward an actionable 
description of the problem.


 > I understand the desire to get clear, actionable bug reports,
 > and I understand the need to not waste limited team resources
 > on bad bug reports, but if the requirements are causing Jacque
 > to fail to report a bug, that's a huge issue.

In this comparison between posting bugs to this user-to-user discussion 
list vs. putting them into the bug DB where they can be acted on, I 
don't think Jacque's comment applies.

After all, it's not like she choose to take the time to report it here 
either.

All she noted was that sometimes when she's under a heavy deadline to 
ship something with the version she has, she doesn't take the time to 
submit a bug report at all, either here or in the bug DB.

I noted in reply to her post that I often to do the same, as we all do 
when we're busy.

None of us is obliged to submit bug reports. We can choose to submit 
them when a bug impacts our work to the point that it benefits us to see 
it resolved.  Or not.  It's entirely voluntary.


Looking forward....

As you noted the current version of the Bugzilla implementation RunRev 
has is much improved over earlier versions, and there may be ways it 
could be streamlined further still.

Many years ago one of our community members, Ken Ray, made a nifty 
plugin stack to submit and review Bugzilla posts from within the IDE.

It's long since outdated and he's been too busy with other commitments 
to maintain it, and like myself and others, he's found the Web 
implementation usable enough that it hasn't been an impediment for him.

But if going to the Web page is holding folks back from submitting a 
bug, I'm sure Ken would grant permission for anyone with sufficient time 
and interest to rewrite his stack to work with the current bug DB.

It's available as "Revzilla", the first link on this page:
<http://www.sonsothunder.com/devres/livecode/downloads.htm>

If there's interest I'd be happy to contact him to get explicit 
permission for such a revision.

That's just one option.  There may be others.

What other things might we consider to make filing bug reports into the 
bug DB significantly more efficient than filing them here in this 
user-to-user list?

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  LiveCode Community Manager
  richard at livecode.org