Simple but worthwhile to fix bugs?

[Daniel Holbach]

Hello,

On 04.09.2012 20:59, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> Bad spelling and bad grammar are pet peeves of mine.  I try to submit
> patches upstream when I spot errors myself.  But admittedly these are
> typically minor issues.  I think it's good to identify them, but it's
> more efficient for these to go directly upstream.  The sponsorship
> process adds overhead and uses up time of reviewers that would be better
> to spend on more substantial issues.

I agree that fixes should go as upstream as possible. It's what I tried
to make clearer in the packaging guide and I'll integrate the
information into the bug fixing initiative page.

If fixes are minor but suitable, I think they should still be reviewed,
even if they're trivial.


> One area I think this audience could have a bigger impact on is
> backporting of existing fixes from upstream.  This involves doing SRUs,
> which might be a bit much for newbies, but it usually requires little or
> no coding skill, just packaging/process know-how.

Agreed. It'd be nice if we had a good list of them somewhere, so we
could add them to the bug fixing page easily.


> Much of the trouble of backporting fixes is figuring out how to
> reproduce a problem and locating the upstream fix; but this is good
> "many hands make light work" type stuff that makes good use of the
> community.  The remainder of the work is straightforward packaging and
> process type stuff; quite learnable via sponsorship and with plenty of
> ready pilots and mentors.  We can't effectively mentor someone to learn
> C++ to fix a bug, but given an existing patch we can certainly mentor
> someone through the rest of the process of packaging/testing/sru'ing
> it.

Agreed.

Have a great day,
 Daniel

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