Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

use Perl Log In

Log In

[ Create a new account ]

schwern (1528)

schwern
  (email not shown publicly)
http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
AOL IM: Michael Schwern (Add Buddy, Send Message)
Yahoo! ID: schwern (Add User, Send Message)

Journal of schwern (1528)

Friday February 18, 2005
03:02 AM

Use the damned request tracker!

[ #23241 ]

I think I found a bug in Test::More, but before I file it in
the request tracker, I wanted to confirm with you.

ARGH! I hate getting mail like this. People are trying to be nice but they're actually making my life harder. When the bug comes to me directly I have to deal with it immediately rather than run the risk of it sinking to the murky, fossilized depths of my inbox. Or I have to enter the bug into RT myself taking up more time. Any discussion we have is lost to the ether.

Why do people do this? The only thing I can figure is that there's some perceived stigma associated with "officially" reporting a bug for all to see. Let me make it clear, there is no stigma associated with reporting a bug via rt.cpan.org! You're not accusing me of writing shoddy software. I don't care what my public bug count is. And if its not a bug I'll just reply and resolve it. If it is a bug its in the system, it won't get lost, and we have a nice log of the conversation. It makes my life easier.

Use the request tracker. That's what its there for, to track requests so I don't have to.


List all Journal entries
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Use the damned request tracker! 9 Comments More | Login | Reply /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More | Login | Reply
Loading... please wait.
  • That's what the 'b' key is for in mutt. I just bounce it to RT and it sits there appearing to have come from the original sender.

    • I've been bouncing direct mail to perl5-porters for a while. Sod ettiquette - if someone is not able to read the fine manual on where to report problems, I'm going to take direct action. I've also changed my public e-mail address on PAUSE to nwc10+please+use+perlbug+for+perl+queries@colon.colondot.net (and yes, that is a valid address that works, although MBM's MTA is deliberately very very picky and reasons it gives for bouncing mail are probably valid). acme said that he used to get a lot of private mail

    • So I can just bounce it to bug-Module-Name@rt.cpan.org? Brilliant!
  • Enhancement requests via IRC are worse.
  • I don't think most people know about RT. Hardly anyone advertises it or tells people that it even exists. There are more people who don't follow the mailing lists, discussion fora, and blogs than those who do. Some long time Perl users don't even know about CPAN (and I'm always shocked to see people feverishly copying down the address when I mention it in an advanced Perl class.)

    The Test::More documentation that I have doesn't tell the user to report bugs to RT. Indeed, it uses your pobox address inste
    • Test::Harness does this. Note that the rt.cpan.org ticket numbers went from about 3000 to 11000 in about a month. Spammers absolutely clobbered the queue. Seems to be under control now though.

      But yes, I should probably mention it in some form in the docs. However, in this case, the reporter deliberately side-stepped RT though it turns out there were ulterior motives.
  • Although I've never tried reporting a suspected bug - In fact if I can't get something to work, my first thought is that it's a PEBKAC error, not a problem in the software;) - I imagine some people are afraid to have their own misunderstanding officialy logged for eveyone to see and giggle at.
    • >
      > I imagine some people are afraid to have their own misunderstanding officialy logged for eveyone to see and giggle at.
      >

      I think this is significant. In my own department I introduced RT for sys admin support requests. Another closely associated department liked it, but also wanted to have all comments and replies cc-ed to the mailing list that everyone was on.

      The result was that staff stopped using it on their own unless directed by management to submit a ticket. Management continued to use
Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.