[xubuntu-users] Bug Reporting

[Lutz Andersohn]

Elfy's original point was testing prior to release. Not sure whether
those frustrating "no-response" bug reports in the post below fall into
that category. If not, maybe the post misses Elfy's point.

My personal experiences with bug reporting is actually pretty good. and
I can't really complain. Yes, there are some that seem to go on forever
but then again, given that this is all done by volunteers in their spare
time, I have say thank you and kudos to everybody working on this
busting their posteriors.

On 10/06/2014 04:07 PM, George F. Nemeyer wrote:
> 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*.
>
>
>