Core Developer Application for Richard Johnson (nixternal)
Richard A. Johnson
nixternal at kubuntu.org
Sat May 24 02:19:11 BST 2008
On Friday 23 May 2008, Stefan Potyra wrote:
[...]
| Yay. Even though I haven't sponsored anything for you (at least not that I
| can recall currently), I fully support your intention to make Kubuntu rock
| even more!
Thanks!
| I won't have any komments about kde4 right now (and particularly not that I
| tried it and it felt like Vista :P), but I'd rather like to take this
| opportunity to ask you a few questions about Kubuntu in general, which I
| always wanted to know so far:
Vista? oh man watch out now :)
| S.th., that was/is very hard for me, is to track down which KDE package a
| bug relates to. How do you manage this? Is there some
| kuideline/readme/documentation about this? (e.g. what package might cause
| bug #188385).
Well for me it is just a way of life I guess. I have been dabbling in the KDE
SVN repos since 1996/1997, so I kind of know where everything is hiding in
there and what belongs where. As for guidelines on how you can tell what goes
where, I am not 100% sure there is any one specific document, haven't looked
for one myself, but might be a good thing for me to work on getting documented
eventually. The package that could cause the issue you are seeing could be
related to a couple of things actually (both in kdebase though):
* kdebase -> kcontrol -> kcmkeyboard
* kdebase -> kcontrol -> kcmkeys
There have been, and still are, known issues with the Win or Super key in KDE at
times. There are a few upstream reports concerning the use of the Win key in
shortcuts not working. Funny thing is, I use Win+E for Konqi, and have never
had an issue with it.
| I'm also kurious: I assume that KDE packages recieve a large number of
| bugs. How do you manage to triage these?
Patience is the biggest thing to have when triaging KDE bugs, because like you
stated in the last paragraph, it is difficult for some to pick the correct
package, so a majority of the time, myself and others go through and make sure
bugs are part of the correct package. Once I have located the correct package,
I will apply it as necessary, and then try to reproduce the issue. If I cannot
reproduce the issue, I ask for further information if possible and then head to
bugs.kde.org to see if I can locate a similar bug there. If I can, I then go
ahead and link to it.
| Finally, for my two pet bugs, #188385 (again) and (though it's not much of
| a problem right now) #75416. My believe is that these are absolutely
| non-trivial bugs to be found in the source (which might even be caused by
| race-conditions).
I know you have been struggling with #75416 for a while now. I have been trying
to get people upstream to reproduce it, or locate the issue itself. I have
located in the source where the error comes from, and have gone over this with
upstream, and there is nothing that sticks out as wrong.
| How do you intent to address/fix bugs that are filed like this, i.e. w.o.
| too much information how to reproduce these, w.o. too much klue who/what
| might be the evildoer and for the first one probably w.o. even being listed
| against the right package?
Unfortunately the bug is in a KDE 3.5.x release, so we know that upstream isn't
going to fix it more than likely or really attempt to hunt it down, unless of
course it rears itself in the 4.devel releases. As addressing/fixing these
types of bugs, I outlined it a bit up top. I can typically figure out which
package a bug is reported against right from the get go, if not, then I do a
quick research to figure out where it may be located, then head upstream to try
and find it. I will also check out Debian, openSUSE, Gentoo, Fedora, and other
distributions bug trackers to find anything similar. Sometimes you get lucky
and find the fixes right away. I have started going to the forums as well (both
ubuntu and kubuntu forums) to see if anyone is having a similar problem as the
reporter. If I can't figure it out, there are plenty of others I can go to for
help in order to get something fixed. Of course, with more minor bugs, if I
can't figure them out quickly or find someone who can, I will try to spend more
time on the more major reports.
| Also in this kontext: How do you manage to kope with upstreams bug tracker
| (I've tried to search/file a bug once, but to no avail *g*).
I have been using the upstream bug tracker, which like you do not enjoy, as well
as other KDE developers don't enjoy. I have gotten used to it and after using
it for so long, you just learn to cope with it. I work with a lot of upstream
bugs not related to Kubuntu as well, and even have admin rights in there, so
don't come through filing bugs against the nixternal :)
| Finally, as I've dared to take a look at the source kode of (very few)
| parts of KDE so far:
| kdebase konsole/konsole/konsole.cpp +43 kontains an interesting komment:
| "konsole/kwin session management, parts stuff, config, menues are all in
| bad need for a complete[sic] rewrite."
| (and imho there was a komment stating that this was valid for konsole in
| general in earlier days, but I'm not too sure).
This comment was added September 5, 2000 during the KDE 2.x days. It just seems
that nobody cleaned out the header of this file since then. Yes, this would
have definitely been valid back then (this was the time I started checking out
Gnome a bit actually to be honest).
| Is all that KDE kode in such a state? Do you believe (though as I wrote I
| have seen only very few pieces of the puzzle), that KDE code is generally
| not of a very high quality? If so, have you looked at procmail yet? *g*.
Today, I would definitely say no to the KDE code being in a state similar to
that then, in both KDE 3 and KDE 4. Since then, Konsole has received a lot of
love and has become one of the more popular applications in KDE (I can't live
w/o out, and it is now a KPart, so many other apps also use it).
| And the very last question from me:
| As you're a member of MC, have you any kuestions regarding my kore-dev
| application? *g*.
Ya, answer all of the questions you just asked me :p Or better yet, where is all
of your info in your application? :p
| Kreetings,
| Stefan.
|
| P.S.: Read/answer this with a krain of salt, I'm a happy user of Kubuntu
| and am very glad that it works so well for me :).
Glad to hear that! We would be even happier if you brought your elite skills
over to the Kubuntu team and helped out :)
| P.P.S: [sic]: of kourse the korrect spelling is komplete :).
I have to admit, that was kind of difficult to read. Heck, you even replaced
some g's with k's in there :)
If I missed something, holler at me. Right now I am so sick (cold + flue ==
broken nixternal) and out of it. Thanks for the questions. If you need some
schooling in how to work with KDE upstream, poke me :)
--
Richard A. Johnson
nixternal at kubuntu.org
GPG Key: 0x2E2C0124
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