Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 01:27:43 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: "Michael C . Wu" <keichii@peorth.iteration.net> Cc: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, Boris <koester@x-itec.de>, Murray Stokely <murray@osd.bsdi.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Sitting on hands (no longer Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT) Message-ID: <3A41BEFF.AC6E6CB9@softweyr.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012181442290.25125-100000@pike.osd.bsdi.com> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012181442290.25125-100000@pike.osd.bsdi.com> <16785804580.20001219030629@x-itec.de> <5.0.0.25.0.20001219111044.020739e0@mail.etinc.com> <20001219123956.A30283@peorth.iteration.net>
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"Michael C . Wu" wrote:
>
> On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 11:43:17AM -0500, Dennis scribbled:
> |
> | case and point: How many of us are sitting on our hands waiting for DG to
> | have time to fix the latest snafu in the if_fxp driver? You cant blame him
> | for having a job and earning a living, but the fact is that only he has
> | enough experience with the part to do the job. We all have source, but who
> | wants to spend a couple of weeks learning the intricacies of a very complex
> | part to fix what amounts to a very small bug?
>
> Many of us do.
I, in fact, once did. It was a great learning opportunity for me and only a
minor pain in the butt for DG. I collected data and learned where the driver
hung, he realized almost immediately what was causing the problem and sent me
a quick pointer to aonther driver that already had the same problem sovled,
and it took me another few minutes to isolate the code, test, and provide a
patch.
It is a shame how many think they cannot be of help in a situation like this,
when in reality they can be extremely helpful. One of the most important
skills you can learn and polish as an open source contributor is to write
good bug reports or descriptions. Instead of saying "your driver don't work
with my xyz123 rev A-11 card", say "the card initialization enters the loop
in xyz123.c at line 413 (rev 1.4.2.27) and never returns; if I change to the
to exit after 1 million tries, the system boots but the the xyz123 device
isn't in the dmesg." Then include the full dmesg and perhaps your kernel
config if that might have something to do with it.
You'd be astonished just how helpful you CAN be, simply by tracking down an
appropriate routine, adding a few printfs, and isolating where the problem
is occurring.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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