Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2002 14:31:20 -0800 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>, current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Searching for users of netncp and nwfs to help debug 5.0 problems Message-ID: <3DDEB038.5C8BA89A@mindspring.com> References: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1021122082107.81249T-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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Robert Watson wrote: > It sounds like there are a couple of problems here > -- that we need a debugging guide (How to prepare a useful bug > report for a kernel panic, How to prepare a useful bug report > for a sysinstall failure, etc) A "bug-filing wizard" would be useful. The "send-pr" system doesn't cut it, and most people are unaware of how to file a decent bug report. It doesn't help when the process involves another computer, a serial cable, recompiling a kernel to use a serial console and turn DDB support on, special configuration for system dump images, and changing the size of your swap partition to support the amount of RAM you have put into the machine. The bug-filing process has to be self-contained, and would be best served by a literal transcription of the message that comes up as a result of the problem. The number one thing that can be done, though, is completely and totally within FreeBSD's control: unique error reports for wach possible error. This is more or less a design issue. > -- that > we need a better way to find developers on a particular topic who are > willing to pick up more debugging burden. Most developers do not like to clean up after the messes they make; this isn't unique to FreeBSD, but FreeBSD does seem to have a larger number of prima donnas than other projects. There has also been a lot of "kingdom-building"; John Dyson, who I still greatly admire, used to squat on six or seven distinct areas of the kernel, but only had time to work on one or two of them, even when Oracle was paying him to work on FreeBSD full time for their "Network Computer" product. There were warm bodies willing to work on several of the areas he felt he "owned". Simultaneous progress was possible in all of these areas at the same time... IFF the people had been allowed to work on the code, rather than being told "No, I know the answer there, and I will fix it soon". The time of "soon" never came, and the effort proceeded serially, and less progress was made. Respectfully, I submit that the same thing happens on a daily basis, and that John Dyson was not the only one who was trying to juggle too many balls at the same time, though I will not name names: you all know who you are, and most of us in "the peanut gallery" know, too. > I would have guessed that, in general, problems with finding a > responsible party developer would lie more in the areas of the > system that don't have an active maintainer (vis "owner"), which > is a harder problem to address. If that's not a correct impression, > then it's something that's probably easier to fix :-). I think, in general, that FreeBSD attracts just as many developers as Linux, or any other project, but fails to "let them in". One approach might be to decide rough "ownership" of areas of the system: if people are going to act like they own the areas, then make them explicitly responsible. Do this at a sufficiently high granularity, and you'll see that certain individuals "own" perhaps dozens of areas. Then add a field to the PR: "area owner". Go through each of the PR's, and add this field. Don't let an owner do any additional work until they've closed that PR, one way or another, to the satisfaction of the submitter (this is to ensure that "screw you" is not a satisfactory resolution). Put a time limit on it. If the PR contains a patch, and the owner does nothing in the allotted time, then give the PR submitter a commit bit, and give ownership of the area over to them. At the very least, PR's will be closed, and more people actively writing code will end up with commit bits. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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