[xubuntu-users] Bug Reporting

[George F. Nemeyer]

On Mon, 6 Oct 2014, Elfy wrote:

> To rant, if more people tested BEFORE we released, more issues would get
> seen, but that's not what happens of course. A few people test, can't
> test everything and then other people complain when it's too late.

I've supplied bug reports (and feature requests) to any number of packages
over the years, including XFCE-related ones.  From the 'end user'
perspective, having this ability is nice IF you feel your input matters.

In some cases, there's been good responses: requests for clarification
aditional questions, some discussion, and an ultimate resolution.
However, in many cases, the resulting response (or lack thereof) indicates
that filling out the forms is nothing more than a waste of time.  In those
cases, it certainly dampens one's enthusiasm for trying to be an active
participant.

Here's just couple of examples:

VTE -

VTE is the underlying engine library for any number of terminal programs,
including XFCE terminal.  After one 'update' to VTE years ago, things
broke badly.  Rapid cursor movement or selective line scrolling would
confuse VTE about the location of the cursor, and things would get printed
in random or wrong places, 'garbage' characters or bits of the cursor
command string would be shown, or text to be printed would get lost appear
nowhere at all.  It was clear that cursor positioning and attribute
commands were being lost, corrupted, or mis-interpreted.  For machines
that needed X terminals, I had to revert to the older version VTE package
to even make them useable or use a non-VTE-dependent terminal package.

I fully docmented the issue and submitted recorded live test case data
which could be used to let developers see the problem first hand.  There
was a bit of discussion, then no response at all: pro/con or otherwise.
For several years...more than 5 anyway, every new version of VTE had
exactly the same issues.  Meanwile, there was still no update to the
original bug report. FINALLY, with an Ubuntu new install of 13.10 XFCE
Terminal actually *worked* properly out of the box, which indicated VTE
apparently had been fixed. The bug however may still be open.

XFCE Network Monitor -

Network Monitor is a very simple XFCE panel widget that shows a nice,
simple pair of vertical bar graphs showing network TX and RX activity.
It's *VASTLY* superior to the tiny pair of overlapping terminal screen
icons that some OSs use that just blink and whose few pixels that do blink
can barely be seen anyway.

However, being simple, you have to tell it manually what network interface
to monitor.  This means the montitor on a laptop which routinely moves
from office wired to wireless networking must be opened and preferences
reset with each move.

About 10 years ago, I submitted a 'feature request' whereby a simple AUTO
select mode would be implemented by just periodically looking at the
routing table to see which interface device was servicing the default
gateway and displaying that for 'the network'.  I further suggested the
label for the widget, which is a manually entered fixed string, allow for
AUTO selection of ether one of 2 user-defined strings, or to just indcate
the device itself such as eth0 or wlan0.

This seemed like something pretty trivial, and others expressed their
desire for the feature as well.  Some form of 'auto' selection was even
listed in the to-do wish list.  Yet here we are, 10 years later, and
nothing has changed.

I still have machines that run a VERY KLUDGY script I wrote that looks to
see what the current gateway is, then copies one of two entirely
differently configured Network Monitor widgets into place the panel setup
whenever a user logs in.  At this point, I assume there will never be an
update.

In some cases, I've gotten automated bug-report updates years later that
say 'We're closing this.' after 2-3 TOTAL revisions of the entire OS!

In summary, putting in bug reports or requests is a lot like reporting
scam phone calls to the FTC Do Not Call List reporting site:  You make the
effort, but they tell you that they won't deal with *your* problem, just
that your input only goes to 'help establish patterns and trends'.  That
is:  They want your input, but don't expect anything to actually *happen*.