Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 13:04:13 -0500 From: Munish Chopra <mchopra@engmail.uwaterloo.ca> To: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: more -current testers Message-ID: <20020219130413.A25630@rn-re116a13.uwaterloo.ca> In-Reply-To: <20020219125011.A15871@blackhelicopters.org>; from mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org on Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 12:50:11PM -0500 References: <20020219125011.A15871@blackhelicopters.org>
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On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 12:50:11PM -0500, Michael Lucas wrote:
>
> It seems that the best we can hope for is to educate some of the
> braver users who are ready to take the next step and are willing to
> donate some time to us.
>
Very good idea. I probably qualify as a good representation of the type
of users you are targetting.
> I'm considering doing a series of articles on testing FreeBSD-current,
> including: setting up for kernel dumps, what to type at the debugger
> prompt after a crash, filing a decent bug report, what to expect from
> -current, and so on. I would also make it clear when to not bother
> filing a bug report (i.e., "You crashed, but had no WITNESS? Sorry,
> enable WITNESS & try again."). This would be (I suspect) three
> articles, running about a month and a half.
>
That sounds good. I'm more of a no-BS-get-down-to-business kinda guy
though. I like quick instructions and explanations of why. I should be
able to figure out most of the stuff through whatever comes out of this
thread though. And there's always the handbooks...
> My question to the community is: is it too early to do this? If I
> start now, the articles would probably appear April-May.
I'm not going to pretend I'm an authority on this, but I think it'd be a
good time to start now. All I am more or less comfortable with is typing
'trace' and looking at stuff I don't know anything about :) Give people
some time to experiment with how the tools work and why they do what
they do. After they've had to use them for a little while and the
feedback isn't complete garbage to them anymore, the bug reports will be
much better and more concise (I'd hope so at least). That would give
then -CURRENT branch a boost at a time when I would guess it'll really
need it.
Basically, people who are new to -CURRENT like me need some time and
advice to get comfortable with the tools. Then we'll be of much more
help than stumbling around blindly.
--
Munish Chopra The FreeBSD NVIDIA Driver Initiative
http://nvidia.netexplorer.org
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