On Tue, Nov 23, 1999 at 11:48:58AM +0100, Jochen Topf wrote:
> Kaare Rasmussen <kar@webline.dk> wrote:
>
> No I haven't reported them. I have reported a minor bug that I could reproduce
> to the bug tracking system. But all the other problems I had, were, as I said,
> not reproducable. I tried to come up with a small test case for some of the
> bugs and failed. Sure I can report them all, but the developers will tell me,
> and rightly so, that they can't do anything with it, because they can't
> reproduce it. I know that this is not very helpful, but I know no easy way out
> here.
>
Jochen -
One thing I've noticed following the HACKERS list for a while, is that
the developers are very good at helping turn not-reproducible bugs into
reproducible ones, as well. By that I mean, they can often help narrow
the scope of variables to consider significant, based on the exact error
message, even if it's a rare bug. Sometimes, just knowing a particular
error can be triggered on anyone's system can lead a developer in the
right direction when back-tracing possible execution paths, and often
suggest some simple tests. As I said, I've seen it happen more than
once in the last year. I understand your reticence in reporting bugs
without a simple reproducible test case: it's worthless when contacting
your typical commercial vendor, where your talking to some code tester,
who probably isn't a developer.
Heck, I recently had a case where I submitted a bug, with simple
reproducible case to a commercial vendor. I even diagnosed exactly what
the cause was. When that company got ready to release a new point release,
I was contacted by their QA department, because they couldn't reproduce
the bug, and wanted me to pull their beta, upgrade my working mission
critical system, and see if the bug was still there! Apparently, they
couldn't be bothered to keep an installation of their currently released
product around to test on, but I could be bothered to potentially break
my system for them. Sheesh!
So, in short, report those bugs, even if elusive. At best, the bugs
will get stamped out faster, at worst, you'll point out pontentially
suspicious sections of code to the developers.
Ross
P.S. I noticed you mentioned the 'bug tracking system'. I know that a
web based bug tracker was tried out earlier this year, but was abandoned
in favor of the mailing lists.
--
Ross J. Reedstrom, Ph.D., <reedstrm@rice.edu>
NSBRI Research Scientist/Programmer
Computer and Information Technology Institute
Rice University, 6100 S. Main St., Houston, TX 77005