From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,51c3093575f2b4a7 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!proxad.net!feeder1-2.proxad.net!cleanfeed2-b.proxad.net!nnrp13-1.free.fr!not-for-mail To: echancrure@gmail.com From: Samuel Tardieu Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: bug report being ignored References: <7ea24dfc-e992-48b6-bd4e-102a5924456a@62g2000hsn.googlegroups.com> Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:33:32 +0100 Message-ID: <87r6f0hdj7.fsf@willow.rfc1149.net> User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:+hctV52sXm/0PO1bU4NVZgQEFXA= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Leafnode-NNTP-Posting-Host: 2a01:5d8:5138:2f95::3 Organization: Guest of ProXad - France NNTP-Posting-Date: 25 Feb 2008 23:35:01 MET NNTP-Posting-Host: 88.191.14.223 X-Trace: 1203978901 news-1.free.fr 2346 88.191.14.223:56918 X-Complaints-To: abuse@proxad.net Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:20067 Date: 2008-02-25T23:35:01+01:00 List-Id: >>>>> "Chris" == echancrure 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/