Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2000 20:43:20 +0200 From: Neil Blakey-Milner <nbm@mithrandr.moria.org> To: Ignacio Cristerna <ignacioc@avantel.net> Cc: Micke Josefsson <mj@isy.liu.se>, Bob Martin <bob@inu.net>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: About introducing newbies to FreeBSD Message-ID: <20001102204320.A34775@mithrandr.moria.org> In-Reply-To: <FOEDJPDHEFHBAFLANPOBOEEICOAA.ignacioc@avantel.net>; from ignacioc@avantel.net on Thu, Nov 02, 2000 at 09:55:58AM -0600 References: <XFMail.001102130926.mj@isy.liu.se> <FOEDJPDHEFHBAFLANPOBOEEICOAA.ignacioc@avantel.net>
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On Thu 2000-11-02 (09:55), Ignacio Cristerna wrote: > What is absolutely maddening is the way the installer accepts input from the > users. Sometimes you press (or are supposed to press) <RETURN> and some > other times you are supposed to press <SPACE>. But the worst part is when > you just finished installing the OS and you find yourself back in a menu > telling you to do some final adjustments. If you decide to do these final > adjustments, the f*****ng installer installs the OS again! Itīs outrageous! That would be a bug. You can get bugs fixed if you mention them to someone who can fix them, or fix them yourself. If you're a newbie (from the subject), this is as simple as (optionally) making sure with other people that they get this problem too (questions@FreeBSD.org is a good place to do this), making sure yourself the problem exists, and then reporting the bug, if someone doesn't fix it when you ask around if people get the problem. There are two ways to report bugs - mail, and the PR system. I suggest filing a PR, and then sending mail to a mailing list (possibly hackers@FreeBSD.org if you're _really_ sure you found a bug) after a few days (some people do it immediately, but often things are dealt with jsut by people watching the bug reports) providing a short overview, and a pointer to the PR. The PR will probably be assigned to the maintainer of the code, if any, (in this case, Murray Stokely (murray@FreeBSD.org)) and then they'll ask a few questions if they can't reproduce the problem, and then will work on a fix, or assign it off to someone who will do the fix. File the PR, please. These don't get lost nearly as easily as mail archives. If the person can't do it now, he may assign it to the general pool, and at least if you file the PR, the general pool will know about it, and someone may stumble over the problem, or see the PR, and fix it. Otherwise, it will most probably be forgotten. It's not about the developers being bad, it's about the developers having tons of work sometimes, and less work other times, and that if something slips passed when they're working lots, they usually don't want to dredge through mail archives searching for problems (most of which will be solved already anyway), and they don't necessarily have perfect memory as to what problems they saw last week, and of those, which still aren't solved. This is why the PR system exists - to provide a more failure-resistant memory to the developer community. What doesn't make the bugs get fixed is people who don't report them, and then hold them as some sort of trump card to complain vitriolically on the mailing lists on a thread that the people who count may not be reading. I'd suggest you make sure to calmly look at the problem, write out as much information as possible, and as much detail, and describe all your steps, and do what I say above. Neil -- Neil Blakey-Milner nbm@mithrandr.moria.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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