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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,978f50245fc02645 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) Subject: Re: Root of a GNAT problem (was: Gnat v3.05 bug or compilation problem Date: 1996/12/10 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 204497309 references: <58h301$gad@alfali.enst-bretagne.fr> <58h6n2$2hbi@info4.rus.uni-stuttgart.de> <1996Dec9.110039.1@eisner> <1996Dec10.070629.1@eisner> organization: New York University newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-12-10T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Larry said "and the text you offer, while quite helpful in explaining what seems to be a perfectly reasonable maintenance policy indeed does not make the claim that "we understand the cause". Even given non-automated response tactics, there must be occasions when acknowledgements can only be timely by preceeding full understanding." Actually, understanding the cause is 90% of the effort in many, perhaps most cases, of difficult bug reports. Often it takes a long time before we can even look at a report from an unsupportd user. In practice, the more carefully the report is prepared, the more likely we are to look at it earlier. This is particularly true for runtime problems, where it makes things much easier if they are carefully narrowed down. A substantial number of reports are incomplete, or are not bug reports at all, just misunderstandings, and those of course do not get filed. We also do not have the resources to provide general Ada 95 assistance to the world in such cases, so we don't have time to explain people's misconceptions to them, except in cases where it is trivial to do so. Of course, explaining misconceptiojns etc is very much part of our support activities for supported customers.