Core Developer Application for Richard Johnson (nixternal)

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

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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