Re: Reporting bugs and bisection

From: Adrian Bunk
Date: Wed Apr 16 2008 - 16:16:54 EST


On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 09:39:41PM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>...
> > E.g. if you look at commit f743d04dcfbeda7439b78802d35305781999aa11
> > (ide/legacy/q40ide.c: add MODULE_LICENSE), how could you determine
> > automatically that it is a bugfix, and the commit that introduced
> > the bug?
>
> Well, a dead giveaway would be:
> "http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10124";

Which could be "There is no driver for my TV card in the kernel."

> > You can always get some data, but if you want to get usable statistics
> > you need explicit tags in the commits, not some algorithm that tries
> > to guess.
>
> As said above, I don't agree, you can 'guess' very reliably on a large
> dataset. Also, most commits are already 'tagged' in some way or
> another. The trick is to find the pattern in this tagging and use it.
>
> I hope this clears things up a bit,

I hope you are aware of the non-technical implications if the results
don't match reality?

E.g. I am proud that my commits do virtually never introduce bugs, so
any results someone publishes about what I do should better be right
or my first thoughts are somewhere between "fist" and "lawyer". [1]

> Cheers,
>
> Sverre Rabbelier

cu
Adrian

[1] my actual reaction might only be an angry email, but I hope you
get the point that wrong results can really piss off people

--

"Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

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