[HN Gopher] Closing 45% of the open Emacs bugs ___________________________________________________________________ Closing 45% of the open Emacs bugs Author : clircle Score : 239 points Date : 2021-08-14 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (lars.ingebrigtsen.no) (TXT) w3m dump (lars.ingebrigtsen.no) | siraben wrote: | > Just a reminder: Working on the development version of Emacs is | easy on most operating systems. | | With Nix, it's amazing to be able to just run (on macOS/Linux) | nix develop nixpkgs#emacs | | and be on my way to fetch the tarball and compile (dependencies | already loaded into PATH). The same goes for packages like vim or | even firefox, if you wanted to hack on them. | gvd wrote: | They shut down emacs? | CyberRabbi wrote: | I'm disturbed that he needed a for loop to compute 100*(1-0.9^10) | codesections wrote: | > I'm disturbed that he needed a for loop to compute | 100*(1-0.9^10) | | I assumed that he just wanted a reason to include at least a | _little_ elisp. (Though, even so, he could at least have run | the calculation recursively; in Raku, I'd probably have written | (-> $_, $i { $i ?? &?BLOCK($_ x .9, $i-1) !! $_ })(100, 10) | | if I wanted an alternative to `100 x (1 - .910)` | kzrdude wrote: | What's the most exciting features recently added to Emacs (or | coming soon)? I don't use emacs at all, so any feature you're | excited for is fair game, even if it's not exactly recent. | dotancohen wrote: | I'm not an Emacs user per se, but I am an org-mode user. I | don't even know where to begin to start recommending org-mode, | it is a literal life changer. It is everything that you've ever | wanted in any note-taking app (Except perhaps syncing with | mobile devices, but people are working on that). | | Seriously, go through the fine tutorial and just start | exploring it. No matter what you put off for doing that, it | will be worth it. | | https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/orgtutorial_dto.html | TacticalCoder wrote: | native-comp | | LSP support (Language Server Protocol). Basically any language | / file format for which a LSP backend has been written can now | be used from Emacs. | | LSP is not as powerful yet as, say, IntelliJ IDEA for Java | development but suddenly the line between "text editor" and | "IDE" for Emacs got much, much, much more blurry. | jhgb wrote: | > but suddenly the line between "text editor" and "IDE" for | Emacs got much, much, much more blurry | | SLIME already did this to Emacs like twenty years ago. | jonpalmisc wrote: | Somewhat recently the native-comp branch was merged which | compiles Elisp to native code. | | In my experience, this has a huge positive impact on | performance, and can make Emacs feel a lot faster, smoother, | and more responsive. Others say it doesn't yield a noticeable | difference for them, but on both of my machines it's quite | noticeable. | TroisM wrote: | I changed my Google password, and overall, I received 6 security | alerts because of it... I wish that Google would close some bugs | too. They are also known for closing unfixed bugs though... | H8crilA wrote: | If you work for a corporation and feel overwhelmed try what the | emacs people did, example for email: 1) select everything in your | inbox, 2) mark as read, 3) archive. For bugs it would be unassign | everything from yourself, or just close them without fixing. | | I've done this several times and it's magical how you end up | losing almost nothing important in the end. I think it works | because if something is important enough you'll either remember | it yourself or it will be communicated to you again, perhaps even | via a "higher priority channel" such as the management chain. | | And if you think I'm being extreme then yes, maybe, but maybe you | haven't yet drowned in the never ending stream of problems for a | long time. | aprdm wrote: | When I was young I hated that my manager asked me to email many | times if it was important. | | Nowadays I understand ... it's the a way to keep sane and to | see what matters. Mainly in companies that have been around for | decades with multiple products and many many people.. | ploxiln wrote: | I've been in a place where lots of things were flaky and sub- | optimal, and leadership could not prioritize, because only P0 | CRITICAL was ever actually addressed, lots of dumb stuff had | to be marked P0 CRITICAL to have any chance of consideration, | and lots of little easy bugs reported from reasonable | developers were never fixed. | | So, this doesn't always work, it can just be a way to kick | the can around, and end up in the same place but with lots of | extra junk flying by. | waych wrote: | When doing this email trick I'd often broadcast the fact as I | was "declaring email bankruptcy" to let others know I did this | and may have missed their email. | | I've also lead many mass bug closures. Most stale bugs just | need a ping or a friendly closure message. The cost to reverse | a wrongly closed bug from a bug cleanup sweep is zero, and in | the off chance it ignites interest in some other party still | paying attention it at least signals intent and starts a | conversation. | colechristensen wrote: | This is definitely a real phenomenon, there is a lot of "work" | that if ignored long enough turns out didn't need to be done at | all. Lots of things get done which don't need to, knowing which | is which is a really valuable skill. | throwawayboise wrote: | At my job I have learned which people ask for things that | they aren't really serious about. Only so many times I am | willing to reorganize my work to install some "urgently" | needed software or system configuration changes, only to | later observe that they were never used. | | Now when I get requests from those people, they go | immediately to the back burner. If I hear nothing more, they | get closed; if I get followups then maybe it is something | they need after all. | | It's easy for people to ask for others to do things. But many | people are scatterbrained and can't prioritize, and can't see | beyond their own immediate needs and how their requests might | impact other work. Rather than try to demand some realistic | sense of priority for these requests, this approach lets the | urgent stuff bubble up naturally and the rest of the chaff | sink to the bottom. | doctor_eval wrote: | I almost agreed with you until you used the pejorative | "scatterbrained". I think the explanation is "asymmetry". | | It's simply easier to make a request, than it is to resolve | it. The cost of filing an issue is greater than the cost of | resolving it. | | This is why schemes like "you can only file your top 3 | issues" make sense. Forcing the end user to prioritise | their top issues - and to manage the ones that don't make | the cut - distributes the triage work more fairly. | | We have a job to do too and it's a waste of developers time | to force us to guess what's important to an end user. | That's their job. | TeMPOraL wrote: | > _It 's easy for people to ask for others to do things. | But many people are scatterbrained and can't prioritize, | and can't see beyond their own immediate needs and how | their requests might impact other work._ | | But, should they even care? Maybe they think it's not their | job? | | What I mean is, there seem to be two archetypes of ways to | ask someone else for something. For lack of better terms, | I'll call them "market approach" and "social approach". | | "Social approach" is when you try to predict how costly | your request will be to the other person, and only ask them | if the importance is clearly much greater than the cost. | You then expect the other person to feel compelled to | prioritize your request, as they know you wouldn't be | asking if it wasn't very important. | | "Market approach" is when you don't give any thought about | the cost to other party - you just make your request, and | expect _them_ to tell you whether they 'll do it, how long | will it take, and what they expect in return. You then | negotiate the scope of the request and the "price" until | both sides are satisfied, or the request is rejected. | | I don't know which one is better. But I think we're living | the worst case: everyone operates at a different point | between these two idealized approaches. So, in your | example, you're taking the "social" perspective - you treat | requests as high priority ("they wouldn't have asked if it | wasn't important") and get annoyed when your hard work | isn't used. Meanwhile, those people may be operating closer | to the "market" perspective - perhaps they expected _you_ | to push back on their request if it 's disruptive to you, | and were willing to negotiate (they knew it wasn't that | important, but they didn't expect you to assume it was). | doctor_eval wrote: | I like this comment too but in many cases the requesting | party has almost no relationship to the receiving party. | The requester is almost always in a buyers market (filing | an issue is cheap) and the receiver is almost always | social (working closely with others to resolve issues). | | This model does explain the different sides, but the | problem remains. | | So it seems that the problem with the requester's market | approach is that there is no mechanism for setting value. | So how do we solve that? | j1elo wrote: | I agree with the sibling comment, your comment transmits | a great insight that would make for a great longer form | read. Deep down, this is another instance of the problem | of human expectations and how important it is to handle | them correctly for sane interactions with other peers at | work. | dmurray wrote: | This is a great insight and deserves to be turned into a | more pretentious blog post that goes viral on VC Twitter. | | I should get better at recognizing which of my partners | are on the social strategy and who prefers a more market- | based one. Probably all of us should learn this skill. | rightbyte wrote: | There are crappy workarounds for many bugs. The cost is just | moved from the mantainer to the user. After a while the bug | becomes lore. | seoaeu wrote: | Sometimes it is more a matter of getting most of the work | done, without it mattering if some gets missed. Ignoring all | reported bugs might be unsustainable because eventually all | your customers would get fed up and leave, but it is unlikely | that any particular bug would be the breaking point between | the company succeeding or going under. | asah wrote: | +1 - subtly, if it's important someone will re-file or re-open | it. | xoa wrote: | > _+1 - subtly, if it 's important someone will re-file or | re-open it._ | | With all due respect, this absolutely is not the only | outcome. I'm going through this right now with UniFi and | Ubiquiti, which has been a raging development dumpster fire | for years now though the rot has only really started to | become critical and more generally obvious the last year or | two. UniFi is full of very important bugs, issues, and | missing or badly implemented core functionality. But, like | many many others, after devoting a lot of time to detailed | bug reports and figuring out how to make it reproducible and | extensive work helping identify how to meet standards that | all got closed/ignored or even actively got worse? | | I simply don't give a flying fuck any longer. I'm not "re- | filing" (of course, they've dumped even their minimal | mediocre old feature/bug tracker anyway with no replacement, | but I don't make new threads either). I mostly don't bother | anymore with reporting anything UniFi at all. Instead I've | been steadily migrating away entirely. For me, UniFi is now | in a completely subservient role, still doing a certain | amount of switching and WiFi but with 100% of core network | functions, routing/gateway coverage etc moved to OPNsense. As | the time comes to get new gear anyway for WiFi 6E/7 and more | multigig switching that'll be the end of it for my ~100 | pieces of kit. | | Of course companies/projects are free not to care, and | depending on what sort of goal a project has or what sort of | lock-in/stickiness and core revenue areas a business has it | may indeed not matter if there is an exodus of small/older | users/customers. But it shouldn't be assumed in every | instance that "if this is really important someone will poke | us again" because everyone only has so much time themselves | to poke you, and if word gets around that it's pointless to | even try than that will be the last you hear from them until | they're gone entirely. IMO, the true terror for many | business/projects shouldn't be criticism, it's _silence_. | When people simply don 't even care enough to even invest the | time to get mad anymore. | touisteur wrote: | Yeah and I agree especially for poorly documented issues, | unclear demands on your time, etc. | | But as someone with a long QA experience, sometimes I'm so | disappointed in the 'no one bothered me, it must be bothering | no one, close'. What about the time and effort of the person | who described a defect in your system? Don't you want people | giving you clear, researched bug reports? When you close | their issues, although there CLEARLY is a problem and the | ball is CLEARLY in your (sw dev) team, I feel like you're | saying 'don't give me precise, actionable bugs'. That's what | I'm hearing anyway. | | And soon enough you get the eternal dev complaint about how | 'no one fills tickets properly' and the 'no one opens issues | anymore although they face clear annoying bugs' with heavy | faulpelz connotations... Well you reap what you sow. | | I'm not saying the project has infinite resources and that | you should fix all issues all the time... I actually | understand the real world tradeoffs. But put them on a | special list, like knowledge database, known-bugs, not | 'closed until some annoying piece-of-work busybody | complains', and try earnestly to fix one once in a while, I | even had a principle when I was team lead, to correct at | least 5 more-than-2-years-old issues (or add a 'red' test for | that bug). After all with tech turnover, those often make | great onramping tickets. | | And I can testify to the sheer joy of having one of your 'low | priority' issues fixed, even 2-3 years later. 'hey I know | it's been a long time, and we're not sure it's still annoying | to you, but anyway we managed to reproduce on the latest | version and we put a fix in place, let us know if you want a | nightly to double-check or wait until next release'. Even | though it doesn't show on SLAs, I do put in a word when | renewal time comes around (even more now that I have a small | bit of clout). | touisteur wrote: | And the worst part is that for anything else than clearly | laid out bugs/issues, I apply GP's described strategy (if | it is important, it'll come back or I'll remember), | especially as a protection against burnout. I have taught | myself to stop worrying missing an email or not be on top | of everyfuckingthing. Yeah I'll come around to look and | will say 'must be redone, sorry' and there's waste. It's | bad. But you can't do everything and when the external | environment doesnt you adjust to your work capacity by | itself, I've decided to let not-so-critical things slide a | bit. If/when there's a complaint, either I'll resend the | email about not having the time to follow subject X or my | manager will... It's OK. | wiz21c wrote: | FTA : "I think you can pretty much pinpoint the date I didn't | have to work any more after the startup I was a co-owner of was | bought and found myself with a lot of free time on my hands? | Kinda? So I've been basically working full time on Emacs bug | fixing (and triage) for a couple years (with some holidays at | random) instead." | | I would love to be in such a situation... Unfortunately, I don't | have a start up to sell so I'll be a slave all my life and won't | have the opportunity to work full time for a non profit project | that I love. Dies irae. | tasuki wrote: | Not having a startup to sell doesn't mean you have to be a | slave all your life. You could find a job you enjoy, or save up | some money and retire. Look up "financial independence/retiring | early" - it's not suitable for everyone, but if you're here, | you probably qualify :) | alexyz12 wrote: | Im curious to hear more about his startup. I can't find it | online yet... | chr wrote: | Netfonds offered online stock trading in Norway. Now sold to | their competitor Nordnet. | rStar wrote: | thanks so much | throwawayboise wrote: | I don't really know how the emacs project is organized but I | would have assumed that prolog-mode was maintained on its own by | prolog-emacs enthusiasts, and not the core emacs project. I am | hard pressed to consider a complaint about indenting in a | specific language mode an "Emacs bug" | db48x wrote: | The only real requirements for getting something included with | Emacs itself are that you assign copyright to the FSF and that | the code basically works. | | There are well over a million lines of Emacs Lisp code included | with Emacs (a million and a half, last time I checked), and | most of that is for things that the average user won't need | right away, or won't ever need. The goal is to make Emacs (and | by extension Free Software) comprehensive, not to limit the | amount of work that the maintainers might need to do. The work | they do is naturally limited by the amount of time that they | have in a day, so of course it falls to the rest of us to chip | in from time to time, especially with language-specific modes | where the maintainers may not use that specific language | themselves. | jph wrote: | "I'm going to go ahead and guess that the problems discussed were | fixed, and I'm closing this bug report. " | | This is not a way to assert a bug is fixed. Success looks like | actually trying the code in the bug report that demonstrates the | bug, and/or contacting the report participants, to confirm that | the bug is actually fixed for the participants. | convolvatron wrote: | cleaning up the bug reporting system is often one of my jobs. | | the point of a bug report is to let you know something is going | on, to provide context useful in tracking it down, and tracking | for the eventual resolution. | | as they years tick by, some bug reports are counterproductive | because they are unclear, dont give _any_ diagnostic | information, or are no longer relevant because the codebase has | shifted. | | its great to say for each of these issues we should spend a day | or two trying to reproduce them - but its really not the best | use of time. | | we're not talking about capriciously trashing useful bug | reports. we're trying to lower the noise floor so that the | actionable bugs stand out and are more likely to be dealt with. | woko wrote: | The same way we have text classification for the spam in our | mail inbox, couldn't someone train a model to classify issues | as actionable bugs vs. noise for large projects like the one | mentioned in the OP? Data would come from closed issues: | | - if the issue lead to a commit, or a merge is mentioned in | the thread, then it is actionable, | | - if the issue was closed without any code change, then it is | noise. | 542458 wrote: | You do see a decent number of GitHub bots that will trash | issues if they don't comply to some sort of | "expected/observed/steps/specs" format, which I think more | or less accomplishes the same thing. The only issue is | you're potentially losing out on issues from less-tech- | savvy users, but I guess simply using GitHub filters many | of those people anyways. | convolvatron wrote: | maybe. but i think this process really helps develop a | deeper understanding of the evolution of the project and | doesn't take that much time. | | and I bet your AI isn't going to be able to say 'oh yeah, | thats just that thing we fixed in 2.1' | | seems useful in a second-order capacity though - process | introspection | chrsig wrote: | It had been believed to have been fixed over 5 years ago, and | had no follow up from the reporter to confirm or refute. Why | should a maintainer spend more time on it at this point? | UglyToad wrote: | I'm reacting from a place of emotion here but your suggested | approach just doesn't scale for an open-source project. Nothing | is more soul-destroying than an ever growing backlog. If people | don't care enough to follow up with an easy reproducible case | or even open the PR to fix themselves then they have no right | to squat the backlog. | | Sure for commercial situations you expect the customer to sign | off on a fix but a maintainer's responsibility in open source | is exactly 0. Even having a bug tracker is an affordance from | the maintainer, GitHub supports turning issues off. | | I'm going to continue to terminate old issues where the problem | described was vague or the reporter has gone AWOL and I would | encourage all OSS maintainers out there to do the same, let's | manage expectations. | fragbait65 wrote: | My company that I work at actually closes bug reports that has | been in "pending customer feedback" for more than 6 months | automatically. The customer is free to re-open the issue at a | later date if it's still an issue. | | I personally think that's fine. You'd have the time to verify | and close every issue in a perfect world, but the world rarely | is. Before that we had 100+ issues open with bugs we could not | even reproduce that where open for years. It just becomes | clutter at that point. | mook wrote: | That seems reasonable, because you're waiting for a response | that may not arrive. This is very different from a bug where | all necessary customer feedback had already been collected, | and is pending a fix. | triska wrote: | This was achieved also by ignoring open issues and simply closing | the bug even though the issue still exists. An example of this | is: | | https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=21526 | | In general, I find too much emphasis is now on "closing" an issue | as soon as possible. I understand that open issues can be a | burden for maintainers. However, filing issues, especially making | them reproducible, can also be a burden to users, and users will | stop filing issues if too many of them are closed unilaterally | without actually correcting the root cause. | | As I remember it, the Emacs maintainers used to put a lot more | emphasis on actually correcting issues instead of only closing | them, and this may also be the reason why fewer issues are | reported now. | | A great attraction of Emacs is how easily one can actually report | issues, using Emacs itself: M-x report-emacs-bug RET. | tpmx wrote: | 146 messages in that bug thread. Wow. | irrational wrote: | > I'm going to go ahead and guess that the problems discussed | were fixed, and I'm closing this bug report. | | If only there was a way to find out, instead of guessing. | | I'm going to start trying this at work. I wonder how it will | be received? | toast0 wrote: | When I worked for Facebook, the had a bugtracker bot that | closes open issues after 6? months of no activity. It's | sort of nice, but also terrible. | jerrysievert wrote: | I'm going to guess that when you close issues that are | years old, a fraction of them will reappear as enough | people have devised workarounds for the issues and they | will become the de facto fix. | thrower123 wrote: | Everybody does this, it's the normal behavior with | enterprise bugs. | | They report something. You badger them for six weeks to | collect enough information to reproduce it. You fix the | problem and slate it into a release and make it available. | They don't take the release for another seven months. | namdnay wrote: | > I'm going to start trying this at work. I wonder how it | will be received? | | You've never done that at work? In every company I've | worked for, nobody would bat an eyelid at dropping an issue | that hasn't been touched for more than a year | nsizx wrote: | That's how we got that stupid bot on GitHub that | constantly says "comment here or I'll close this". From | time to time I have to waste my time that way. I wonder | if this means maintainers want us all day bumping bugs? | arthur2e5 wrote: | I have this "ready with tests" PR for almost a year now, | and every time I get a notification it's either the bot | or someone who really wants the PR to be merged bumping | it up for me. I don't even care so much about it any | more... | [deleted] | irrational wrote: | Without testing to see if it is actually fixed? Never. | Though, to be honest, it is QA who is testing it, not us | developers. But, only QA can close a ticket and no way | would they close it without being 100% sure it is fixed. | phkahler wrote: | For QA to test tell if it's fixed, they must have a test | case. If there is a test case here, the devs wouldn't | have to guess? | irrational wrote: | See my response to kortilla above. | joshuaissac wrote: | The bug reproduction steps (along with expected vs actual | behaviour) are in the opening comment of the bug report, | so they really should not have had to guess. | Chilinot wrote: | QA is not your test suite. Test your own code, submit | working code, let QA try to break it. | | Dont just push code and expect others to point out your | flaws. Take some responsibility. | irrational wrote: | See my response to kortilla above. | kortilla wrote: | > Though, to be honest, it is QA who is testing it, not | us developers. | | Developers absolutely should be testing for the issues | they know about. QA is there to look for unknown issues. | | Any company that depends on QA for testing and doesn't | make devs to it is miserable to work for (both as a dev | and a QA). | irrational wrote: | Not where I work. QA are the ones who first look at all | reported issues. They see if they can replicate the | reported issue. If they can't they contact the reporter | and try to figure out why they can't replicate it. Once | they can replicate it they write up the ticket with | replication steps and add it to the backlog to be | assigned out in a sprint. They attend all meetings and | explain the issues. Once the developer thinks they have | fixed the issue they send it back to QA to verify it is | fixed. Then QA reaches out to the person that reported | the issue to tell the about the resolution. | dragonwriter wrote: | In most places I've worked, having a bug untouched for | even a fairly small fraction of that time would result in | someone getting, at a minimum, corrective counseling. | kortilla wrote: | Corrective counseling for a single bug? I take it you've | never worked in a US software company. | taeric wrote: | Yeah... This actually seems standard for old backlogs. | | Were all problems fixed? Almost certainly not. Many will | have become overcome by events, though. The ones that are | still pertinent will reopen. | | Such that anytime I see a large percentage of bugs closed | like this, this reflects more on working in the ticketing | system than it does on fixing the problem it is managing. | aprdm wrote: | I've done this at work many times, it's the only way I've | found to keep a big project back log under control... if | people care enough they can reopen | ricardobeat wrote: | Assuming you're the author of that bug report, it looks like | you never did reply to that last message on 23 Nov 2015, so the | developer was left hanging. Seems totally fair to assume this | is fixed after half a decade with zero user comments. | | As an observation, the whole thread is a back-and-forth | exchange of a user supplying incidental test cases and the dev | fixing them one by one, for months. I'm actually surprised the | main emacs maintainer would put up with this - usually | formatters and syntax highlighting are handled by user | extensions, it's not humanly possible for one person to be an | expert in 100+ programming languages and their favored styles. | Someone else who is a heavy user of the language could take the | time to dive in and probably fix all the formatting issues in | one go. Or make a patch to bring in the third-party better- | maintained prolog-mode that is mentioned in the discussion. | [deleted] | mrighele wrote: | The affected users didn't bother to check if the issue was | solved for five years. I think it is fine to close it | ramphastidae wrote: | I disagree. The affected users completed their responsibility | of filing a ticket, and if triage is done correctly, they | should rely to the issue status or comments for updates. The | alternative of having issue creators regularly ping the | assignee for status updates via comments seems unproductive | for both the creator and assignee. | bombcar wrote: | Or they gave up checking and moved on, but the bug is still | affecting others (who do not know how or don't bother to | report) - some of whom may also just move on. | 6AA4FD wrote: | This has always been my problem with emacs. The basic | interpreter and interface design is phenomenal, but it is so | bogged down and buggy it is frustrating to actually push it to | the limits of capability. I wish the devs would just drop | support for stuff that can be maintained just as well as a | plugin. | yjftsjthsd-h wrote: | Time for a neomacs? | distantsounds wrote: | when your text editor has a better bug reporting feature than | its text editing feature, maybe it's time you move onto | something else | agumonkey wrote: | It's super sad considering the new stream of users of all | levels, but energy is spent at the higher layers (emacs config, | org tricks) rather than core.. | 6AA4FD wrote: | This is probably because it is relatively easy to add more | elisp flourishes, another seven major modes for editing | JavaScript, much harder to actually improve the core. | shadowgovt wrote: | As with any large system, improvements to core also risk | compromising large, popular packages. | agumonkey wrote: | I wonder how remacs guys are doing now | the-smug-one wrote: | They're no longer taking PRs, development has moved over | to emacs-ng with a different perspective on how to | improve Emacs. | fanf2 wrote: | There's a new elisp JIT in emacs 28 | | https://emacsconf.org/2020/talks/38/ | | There's a new portable undump in emacs 27 | | https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/whats-new-in- | emacs-27... | | a couple of examples of very core features off the top of my | head | baby wrote: | Your comment feels like you've never worked on an open source | project that gets issues. | mhils wrote: | Last message in the thread: | | > I'm going to go ahead and guess that the problems discussed | were fixed, and I'm closing this bug report. If there's | anything more to be worked on here, please send a mail to the | debbugs address and we'll reopen the bug report. | | I don't think this really qualifies as "ignoring". Having read | the last two messages or so, their approach looks totally | reasonable to me. Please don't scold maintainers for cleaning | up? :( | thrdbndndn wrote: | I'm kind of on the fence for these (in general, not specific | to this ticket). | | Assuming the STR is clear, is it the original reporter's | responsibility, or the developer's, to confirm if a bug is | fixed or not? | xdfgh1112 wrote: | No other approach is sustainable. | jfrunyon wrote: | Really? You think that expecting a user who submitted a | bug report _five years earlier_ to still have patience to | interact with it is sustainable? | ReverseCold wrote: | Maybe if the bug is important, someone else will reply to | confirm? That could be a reasonable line of thinking. | dmz73 wrote: | There are two instances I can think of (I've done it | myself) where the bug is important but user does not come | back to check on the report after 1 or 2 weeks: 1) Trying | out different environment and finding things that do not | work. Report a bug with reproducible example and don't | check it for a while (months or years) since there is | important work to be done in working environment. 2) Find | a bug and then find the workaround since work can't wait | for external fixes. Report a bug with reproducible | example, check the status for a few days with no | responses and then ignore the bug since there is | important work to be done and workaround has been | applied. Now you know one of the reasons why "legacy" | code might look messy - it has workarounds for the bugs | that may have been fixed...but who has the time to go | back and check, change, and test the "fixed" code which | may introduce other bugs. | Chilinot wrote: | Yea, if a bug has been open without further discussion | for 5 years then i would too take for granted that the | issue is no longer an issue and close it. | mpweiher wrote: | And if not, the bug is probably not important. | -\\_(tsu)_/- | | At some point, you have to close things. Chances are they | were spurious, have been fixed or made irrelevant (maybe | the code no longer exists) or nobody cares. | | And if someone does care and it's still an issue, you can | reopen. It's not as if you are permanently deleting all | the information for the rest of time. | jodrellblank wrote: | Recognising the orignal bug opener's name, Markus Triska, | I know he's on HN. I checked his username to see if he's | been active recently and, well, see for yourself: | https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=triska | dotancohen wrote: | Not five year. Two months went from the OP in September | 2015 to the final dev message in November 2015, during | which the OP and the dev were communicating regularly. It | was the OP who didn't respond after the dev mentioned | that he believes that he fixed all the outstanding | issues. | | It was five years later that someone came along and | closed the bug. | LanceH wrote: | I would estimate the chance of a user coming back to | close a bug at near zero, even after only two months. | laumars wrote: | Indeed. As a fellow maintainer I will manually replicate | the error the user reports, write an test to around the | failing function, then fix said function. | | After that I'm usually satisfied the bug has been fixed. | So I will link the git commit hash of the fix to the bug | report and ask the reporter if it fixes the issue their | side. If I don't hear anything back after a week or two I | will follow up with a message much like the | aforementioned: "closing this ticket because I believe it | to be resolved but happy to reopen if you're still | experiencing issues." | | That is the only way I've found to manage projects | because you either end up closing tickets prematurely and | miss bugs, or you end up with tickets open for fixed | issues that take time and additional mental overhead to | filter out (both of which are a scarce resource when | you're trying to balance open source maintenance with a | full time job and a family). | | Two weeks might not seem long but I'm always happy to | reopen issues. However if users really feel that hard | done by this approach then they're welcome to submit a | pull request instead. Or even fork my project and | maintain that they way they feel it should be done. Maybe | they'll have more free time than me to filter through | historic issues that are now fixed but not closed between | their personal lives and coding time. | pwdisswordfish0 wrote: | > ask the reporter if it fixes the issue their side. If I | don't hear anything back after a week or two I will | follow up with a message much like the aforementioned: | "closing this ticket because I believe it to be resolved | but happy to reopen if you're still experiencing issues." | | This tacitly embraces the bugtracker-as-helpdesk/CRM | mindset, i.e., the GitHub approach, which is what leads | to things getting so chaotic and unwieldy in the first | place. It's right in the language--focusing on "their" | issue. Both maintainers and users need to approach the | bugracker by recognizing that the scope of any given bug | report is the bug, and by extension the project, not the | bug reporter or maintainer. By the time a bug is being | closed, a maintainer should _know_ (at least with some | level of confidence--but allowing for them to be wrong) | whether the bug is fixed or not--because it should be | well-defined. If the maintainer is not able to do this | with confidence, it indicates a failure in the practices | for handling bugs--and possibly (or "likely", in the | case of a typical project hosted on GitHub) muddled | scope. | | It may be the case that from the user perspective, | they're still experiencing some issue, but this doesn't | call for the bug being reopened to handle it. Remember, | it's not _theirs_ , it's the bug's! If the last report | led to a real bug being identified, and it really was | fixed, then leave it closed and figure out if it isn't | the case that they misidentified the source of the | discomfort they were experiencing, and if so, have them | attempt to articulate it, then open a new bug for that. | Otherwise, you're just treating your bug tracker like a | message board but splattering it with details from your | personal TODO list--where "open" and "closed" correspond | to whether you've decided you're finished with it or not. | Remember not to think of the bug tracker as yours either! | It belongs to the project and its bugs. Think of the | software as a non-human entity and you as a scientist and | its designated caretaker. It's best to think of the bug | reporter as a scientist, too--and the elevated | expectations and responsibility that comes with it. | yonixw wrote: | IMO, It is the user responsibility to make a reproducible | bug (to become a failing test). From there on it is the | developer responsibility to fix it (make it a passing test) | ajnin wrote: | Absolutely. If there is nothing new and a bug is still | there, there is simply nothing to add to the bug report. | Too often now bugs get closed automatically for | "inactivity" after a short period. Should users come back | every months to "ping" the thread ? Some bugs last for | years, they'd sooner be blocked for spamming. It's just | Goodhart's law in action, a cheap way to reduce the bug | report count. | lixtra wrote: | The last message 6 years ago reads that the dev thinks the bug | is fixed. Since then no-one complained. Do you know that the | bug was falsely closed? Isn't it more an example of a bug | submitter loosing interest in _their_ bug? | | Disclaimer: I did not read all 146 messages. | jodrellblank wrote: | The person you are replying to here (triska) is the original | bug opener Markus Triska. A skim read of the thread, there's | a long back-and-forth of Prolog parsing and formatting and | interaction with Emacs movements, with many bugs raised in | it. (It's more of a review-and-polish something than a single | bug), and near the end Stefan Monnier says: | | > " _OK, let 's turn things around, indeed: we revert to | Stefan Bruda's indentation code, you're handed responsibility | over that code, and I get to send you the bug reports about | all the regressions this will introduce._" | | It's not clear if that's meant genuinely or frustratedly and | sarcastically, but it's taken genuinely and Markus Triska | replies: " _This would be a good improvement in most respects | I consider important, thank you! I will treat all issues you | and others send to me with great care and attention, and work | on correcting all regressions and issues I can. I have a lot | of experience editing Prolog code with Emacs and can spot | regressions quickly._ " | | Followed by Stefan Monnier apparently not doing that, and | fixing two (of many) issues raised and discussed. (Perhaps he | considered it handed over and that the next action would be | patches from Markus Triska?) Then 5 years later Lars (who | wasn't involved in it?) closing the whole thing without | reading it in detail, taking that as "whole thing fixed". | | It's not too far from Zawinski's "Cascade of Attention | Deficit Teenagers" model[1] of open source bug reporting - | they go unread for years, then get closed with "if it's still | a problem, make a new bug". | | [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210311012401/https://www.jw | z.o... | temp8964 wrote: | The word "closed" doesn't mean problem solved. It actually can | legitimately mean the problem is ignored: we closed the case | because nobody cared anymore. | ummonk wrote: | That shouldn't happen because people will continue to report | the bug and open duplicate issues. Instead, it should be | tagged with something like "won't fix". | jfrunyon wrote: | If someone reopens the bug or opens another bug, that is an | indication that someone still cares. | userbinator wrote: | _In general, I find too much emphasis is now on "closing" an | issue as soon as possible. I understand that open issues can be | a burden for maintainers._ | | That's the outcome of metrics-driven development. Getting to 0 | open issues becomes the goal, and not the effect of having less | buggy software. | | I personally despise the GitHub "auto close" bots. Some issues | take a _very_ long time to even reproduce, and the constant | nagging to close really encourages a culture of "if it can't | be easily fixed, it doesn't matter" --- which nicely correlates | with the state of a lot of new software today: all the basic | stuff works, but there are lots of obscure, almost edge-case | bugs. | tw04 wrote: | > even though the issue still exists. | | The second to last post says they believe the issue is fixed, | with nobody complaining it isn't fixed for the 5 years after. I | guess that doesn't seem like a great example of "they closed | the bug without ever fixing it". | lmilcin wrote: | Yep. Closing issues consistently without resolving it is best | way to cause your users to stop caring ever reporting new | issues. | | If you are looking to reduce number of issues, you are on the | right track, because now not only you have closed a bunch of | them without putting much work into it, but less people will be | bothered to document and report their issues. | kesor wrote: | That is how most projects on GitHub are run. There is a bot | that just closes issues after periods of inactivity. As if "not | fixing the bug" can be considered as inactivity. Mostly in | Kubernetes repositories I keep getting this "we are closing | your issue, because we cba to solve it after 4 months" | notifications. | j1elo wrote: | I think people set up those bots without even starting to | think through the consecuences of doing so. There is nothing | more hostile to users than a program that misbehaves, | searching and finding that the problem was reported in 2017 | and closed afterwards with the excuse of no activity for the | last 6 months (or any other equally ridiculously short amount | of time). | | Bugs won't fix themselves due to not talking about them. If | you want to close a report, have a human check if the | reported misbehavior does still happen, and close the bug if | not (or if no way to reproduce was found). Projects seem to | forget that issue reports are reports on defects of _their | code_ , so they should be the first interested in fixing | whatever is wrong. | | I'm the kind of user who takes the time and effort to report | bugs (and I'd say that already puts me on a small % of | users). But when I see these "closed because of no activity", | I just say "F.U., really" and go away. | andrey_utkin wrote: | Dear HNers, would you back a crowdfunding campaign for | maintenance of a particular open source software you rely on, | which would have goals like "for the next year, 50% of newly | reported defects are solved in under a month, 90% in under 3 | months"? | | (Surely there's a lot more details to specify to make this a | reliable bargain.) | SahAssar wrote: | Yes, if it was one of those projects that can be "finished" and | that can set a clear goal for that. | bern4444 wrote: | Yes. There's open source software I love and use daily. | | Currently for me its neovim. What the maintainers and | contributors have done is exceptional. They've breathed new | life into vim (through neovim) and pushed forward broader | (neo)vim development. | | They did (and do) a great job of setting up their goals and | achieving them. Most notably with their recent .5 release which | adds support for first class Lua, native LSP, native Treesitter | support, and more. | | > 50% of newly reported defects are solved in under a month, | 90% in under 3 months | | I don't need a commitment like this. It would add unnecessary | pressure to complete something that may need more time. I feel | like this would follow Goodhart's law[0] and end up leading to | overall worse development progress. | | [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law | WalterBright wrote: | This came up a couple days ago: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28150654 | chrsig wrote: | >It is cost free. It prevents people from filing it again. It | provides insight into later problems. It provides a place where | people can ask and offer advice on working around it. Sometimes | an intractable bug becomes more tractable later. It can provide | a clue to a later bug report. Sometimes someone new has a | brainwave on how to fix it. | | I have to disagree at 1) the assertion that it's cost free, and | 2) it will prevent people from filling it again | | re: 1) - it creates clutter, which at least to some individuals | like myself, can be costly in the form of being | overwhelming/frustrating/obstructive/etc. YMMV on cost:reward | on keeping issues open indefinitely. There are other solutions | like filtering, but if everyone is filtering out untouched | issues, there's not much difference from closing it. | | re: 2) is predicated on issue creators actually searching the | entire backlog for a pre-existing issue, which they may or may | not find. | | I certainly agree that the issue itself should be kept in the | tracking system, and continue to be able to be viewed and | referenced for the reasons you state. Also consider that issues | can be reopened if they were closed in error. | antipaul wrote: | How do we support you? Big emacs fan here. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-14 23:00 UTC)