Re: bug report being ignored

[Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net>]

>>>>> "Chris" == echancrure  <echancrure@gmail.com> writes:

Chris> Hi all, I don't want to be flippant or anything (I am just
Chris> ignorant of the gcc/ gnat process/effort involved), but I
Chris> filled a bug report for gnat on bugzilla #35050 (
Chris> http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=35050 ) on the
Chris> first of February and so far it has remained unconfirmed, never
Chris> mind looked into in view to be fixed.

Chris> It's not always easy to ask question like this without
Chris> offending gcc/ gnat people who are doing a tremendous job.

Chris> It is an annoying bug for me as it has an impact on gnatxref
Chris> that I use a lot.

Chris> Is there anything that I can do to try to get that bug fixed???
Chris> Am I doing something wrong?

As far as I'm concerned, I take no offense, but I will try to explain
the current situation of bug reports against the FSF GNAT tree.

You're not doing anything wrong... except that you expect non-paid
volunteers to do the job in a short time window. As one of the (very
few) people who fix GNAT bugs in the FSF version, I choose the issues
to address according to:

  - the time I have (I do this on my free time, and I have a full-time
    job and many other computer-related and computer-unrelated
    activities);

  - the tools I use (I've never needed gnatxref for my Ada
    development);

  - the severity of the bugs according to my own ratings (an internal
    compiler error is high on the list, especially when it is
    triggered by valid real-world Ada code, a problem on a
    specially-crafted example concerning an obscure RM rule is low on
    my list).

The main issue is the first one I describe, i.e. the time to work on
GNAT. A few months ago, I started fixing the bugs one after another,
in the hope that more people would join the effort. Some of them (in
particular Ludovic Brenta and Duncan Sands) do a tremendous job for
the community, but we really lack manpower. AdaCore is also very
helpful with volunteers working on the public version of GCC; we
*need* to find more people to work on FSF GNAT.

So unless someone gets excited by your bug report, you would better
try to fix it yourself if you have the needed expertise and time, or
wait until it gets fixed by AdaCore because one of their clients has
reported it.

The main point is: when people work on Free Software as a hobby, they
will set their own agenda. And when there aren't many people, not many
topics are addressed at once.

Anyway, thanks for your bug report. Properly reporting issues is already
an important way to contribute back to Free Software you use.

  Sam
-- 
Samuel Tardieu -- sam@rfc1149.net -- http://www.rfc1149.net/