On Wed, 29 Nov 2000, Toon Moene wrote:

> Well, that's not surprising, because it is impossible to fix bugs
> without having the (preprocessed, if necessary) source code.

> Sometimes people give a few sketchy facts and ask, ``Does this ring a
> bell?''  This cannot help us fix a bug, so it is basically useless.

I don't think you have understood my point at all.  So, sorry to repeat
myself, but:

I fully understand that to get a bug fully investigate, and with luck,
fixed, the customer needs to submit source code and full details.
But as you say:

> Try to make your bug report self-contained.

Making a short self-contained piece of code which shows the problem, with
no dependency on external libraries, often takes days or even weeks of
work.

Many times when I have taken the time to submit a full bug report I have
found that all that effort has been wasted, as the vendor simply replies
saying "we already know all about that bug, you can get the fix here...".

What I want is a way of finding out in advance of wasting a week's work
whether a bug is already known about in the area in which I detect a
problem.  Some (a few) vendors make lists of known bugs available.  If
they don't then I think it is very important for them to reply to
questions such as I have posed "Do you know about a bug which occurs in
these particular circumstances?" and not to reply, as you have suggested:

> Without a real example one can compile, all anyone can do about your bug
> report is wish you luck.  It would be futile to try to guess how to
> provoke the bug.

> Please help compiler writers in pinning down bugs - provide complete
> source code and compiler version number plus compiler options supplied.

Yes, of course.  But in turn vendors should help potential bug reporters
by giving them information on known bugs.

Is that too much to ask?

--
Clive Page,
Dept of Physics & Astronomy,
University of Leicester.