It's been a while since we've held Plasma bug days. They worked very well in the past so we're resurrecting them.
On Friday December 2 and Saturday December 3 in #plasma on irc.freenode.net from noon UTC until sometime in the evening (e.g. when the last of us pass out ;) we will be holding Plasma Bug Master Sessions From Outer Space And Beyond With Mustard Sauce .. ok, that's just a working title, admittedly, but here's what will be happening in #plasma on both days:
- Live, hands-on, interactive tutorials on effective bug triage with an empahsis on the sorts of reports Plasma gets
- Handing out bugs.kde.org account upgrades to people who don't have them but ought to
- Massive, parallel, coordinated bug squashing. People who want to try their hands at simple patches are encouraged to join us, but coding skills are not ultimately what we need: we need to comb through the bug database marking duplicates, verifying fixes and finding big issues that deserve more priority.
- Mustard sauce
We also have some targets. Over the last 3 days we've dropped the number of bug reports for Plasma by over 250 and are down by ~213 over the last week. Many were closed with patches, though many also were cleared out with simple bug triage. This is great progress but we have our eyes on the bug count table and, in particular, dropping from #2 to #3 in total bug count. That means another 170 reports to close. Come out and help us achieve that goal for an awesome 4.8!
20 comments:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=251285
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=246895
there is also this bug that make me hungry
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=275469
sorry for this, but kde/plasma is full of bugs.
please fix that before introducing awesome features.
@Fabio: does this mean you're going to come out and help us triage bugs?
i really hope so. because i prefer to think of people who have the time to post comments on my blog about specific bug reports will be part of the solution. our world already has enough actionaless noise in it.
then instead of saying "please fix that" you can say "we're fixing this!"
now .. 275469 is already fixed.
246895 does need addressing, but is not a giant issue.
251285 is an annoyance (you have to close the menu and re-open it) in a widget that is not part of the default layout. i already spent time tracking down the causal issue, as recorded in the discussion on the report.
hopefully both of those will get fixed. of course, fixes happens quicker when people submit patches and help us triage the bug database. which is to say: participation creates efficiencies.
so of the three bugs above, the first was definitely a hot issue. it's been fixed after quite a lot of work went into pinning down the issue (turns out: a bug in Qt that we now work around). the other two are far less important compared to many of the other fixes or the "awesome features" that we work on that people want, need and rely on.
if you really want to make sure that the remaining two issues you listed are addressed according to your time schedule, contribute.
i dunno .. i kind of expected more from the first comments on this blog entry. such behaviour is a contributing factor to why we have a hard time getting contributors to deal with the bug database over time: even when you organize an effort to make significant progress on it, the first response is, essentially, "work harder". there is very little reward for the effort. it's usually silence or comments like these.
awesome features, at least, get positive reinforcement. personally, i try and keep it going on all fronts. not everyone is going to put up with it, however. so please .. help out by, if nothing else, being more supportive and encouraging to those who will be putting in the effort. is that cool with you?
p.s. i considered deleting your posts for a moment. then i changed my mind: perhaps it's more useful that we discuss these issues openly than just keep shoving it under the rug. i will, however, not abide any further "fix my bugs!!!11!" comments on this entry. cheers ...
i just noticed that the two open reports you cited were both filed by you. how tacky and selfish.
i have a personal policy for moments like these: when someone tries to jump the queue with self-serving promotion of their interests in innapropriate times/places, if there are equally valid and important issues also waiting for attention, their issues get pushed to the lowest priority in that line.
that's a long winded way of saying: when all other considerations are equal, i prioritize the needs of people who are constructive and enjoyable.
@Aaron; Would it be useful for someone who's planning to help out to have an up to date git build of plasma set up in advance?
(Un)fortunately I am on vacation in France that weekend, so I will focus on the leftovers the week after. Anyway, great thing, can't wait to see the results. Hoping there will be WiFi, I will be on IRC that hours :)
@Aaron at last, more bug fixing more polishing, faster, better, lighter on resources! I vote for little website with list (something like "one hundred papercuts" but something that will actually work) where people can report and vote most hated _little_ issues that Bug Day will take care of (as many as devs can handle). (I mean only little issues about things that are already there and not working as they should, for real bugs there is bugs.kde.org)
that was just my dream about making kde better as non-coding user
PS there are a lot of users who want to participate but have no coding skills
@solar.george: having an up to date git build is nice, as it lets us test against current development, but it is not necessary. having the latest release (e.g. 4.7.3) is good enough.
@Kai Uwe: yes, there will be lots left to go through still, i'm sure ;) enjoy your vacation!
@Yoda: if it is something that doesn't work, then it belongs on bugs.kde.org.
as for voting favorite things to fix or improve, i find that does not work for a few reasons: the voters often do not have an idea of the work involved in each and so may request unrealistic or overly burdonsome changes when addressing "less wanted" items can be done in greater numbers allowing for more people to actually reach satisfaction.
such voting is also very self-selecting and usually fails to represent our userbase .. esp as such voting usually ends up with people asking others to vote for their favorite issues.
these are very much the problems we end up with for voting in bugs.kde.org. i don't expect moving the voting to another website would fix much of anything.
we also have more than enough to do on these Bug Days, we really don't need more additional topics added. the goal is work on clearing down the bug database, and that's a bigger task than these couple of days will allow. (though i expect to make a very good dent in it)
as for users with no coding skills who wish to help out: this is an opportunity to do so. testing and triage do not take any coding skills whatsoever. :)
@Aaron hmm... you're right :) Just would be grate to point devs to little things like this https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=258559 (also look at attachment what is happening without composition). I know there are much bigger issues but this kind of things can be sometimes really annoying (and are in the way to KDE's world domination ;)
Unfortunately I don't have enough skill to contribute in bugfix, I've done some c++ basic exam on my university and I'm studying python for myself but for understand and try to modify KDE code I think it will take something like 2-3 years and I shall stop university too.
(I don't think is a pretty solution)
I post my own bugs because I know what I'm talking about of course, but I think there are other people with annoying bugs. I don't want my bug fixed I'm just warning that first of go ahead we need to fix things.
I've spent my time about understanding when the bug appear, recorded in a video, uploaded on my ftp server and post a bug in bugtracker, I think is a good thing for an user no?
However when I gave another try to kde4 (I've tried someting like 4.3 or 4.4) I can say that many things made me happy, like startup speed, system responsiveness and finally speed on powerful hardware thanks of the works on openGL front.
As gnome user in exploring kde I saw many option that made me say: "wow this shold be very confortable" why gnome didn't think about it? Yes there is also other options that make me wonder about it's utility.
but a think that surprise me was bug in everyday operation, like windows that doesn't close, panel that keep ghost window or focus that doesn't appear.
Ok maybe is not the better place to complain here and also not for talking about that but I feel unheard about that.
I think that features and bugs are strongly related, in fact gnome doesn't have many features so doesn't have many bugs.
Thanks for the reply to my post and sorry for my english
@Fabio: "Unfortunately I don't have enough skill to contribute in bugfix"
if you can test things (you obviously can if you can file bug reports) then you absolutely CAN contribute to bugfixing: by helping us triage and test existing reports.
if you come out to the bug days, you can help by doing nothing more than going through reports with us, finding duplicates, verifying bugs that exist as fixed or not, etc...
Aron there is a way to insert in my bugs buglist not opened by me?
for example keep track of others bugs in some section and don't save it to browser bookmarks?
@Fabio: yes, you can add yourself to the CC list of a bug and you can also save searches.
we'll cover these (and other) techniques at the bug days sessions :)
ohh really non-intuitive way :)
ps: this sessions can be consulted offline?
little offtopic: How are things about kdm? (kdm-plasma is alive?) Current login experience is not so good (background change, sometimes flickering, default KDM theme doesn't support multi users list etc.)
1. I've been doing the same (triaging, reporting) with some Nepomuk bugs. I won't be able to join you in the Bug Day, but I think I will need soon to request privileges as a bug triager, and I'd like to know the procedure for that.
2. What Plasma isn't having here is bugs, Plasma in KDE 4.8 Beta 1 is working better than KDE 4.7.3 in a lot of ways, instead. The most urgent bugs here were Nepomuk ones, reported, and solved by the relevant people :). Actually, I hated the Device Notifier plasmoid that was present *before* the QML replacement. The new one is immensely better and quicker.
We need better accessibility with the keyboard. I filed a bug about it and it still causes problems in KDE 4.8, but the keyboard interaction in KDE is more like a long-term work and review, and I tried to state what I can do about it - to categorize and tell you, developers exactly where the keyboard isn't working, to enable you to fix the relevant bugs.
3. About mustard sauce, you can always invite @beefymiracle to the Bug Day...
Aaron, a suggestion. And i'm not joking about it!
Why don't we meet somewhere with - lets say - 5 till 10 people? That way we can discuss things a bit with bugs, close them more easily and probably work more efficient anyway.
I'm markg85 and currently in Germany :p I've never participated in a bug hunting day nor came to any KDE gatherings. If anyone is willing to organize something in Germany during the weekend I will certainly come! In the weekend i usually go home, but this is probably way more interesting and fun! Next weekend is probably to soon so i would suggest the 17th and 18th of December provided i'm still (or again) in Germany at that time. Somewhere near Frankfurt would probably be best.
Just my suggestion.
You could as well do 2 bug hunting weekends ^_-
Either way, i will try and join.
Unfortunately, I have one of those dumb day job things that will prevent me from helping out on Friday. (EST doesn't help me that much either)
Saturday morning for me might work though :)
I hope to be able to join for a few hours - if day job finishes in time.
In general, roughly half of the bugs seem to be from 4.6 and earlier. Would it be helpful to go through this backlog dozen by dozen, see if I can reproduce, and simply reply to those bugs whether I can or not?
@Hounddog: i look forward to seeing you there on Saturday :)
@Thijs: "Would it be helpful to go through this backlog dozen by dozen, see if I can reproduce, and simply reply to those bugs whether I can or not?"
absolutely; this kind of triaging is very much needed. if you show up for either of the bug days, i can set you up with bugzilla priveleges so you can even do the triage (mark as duplicate, close as fixed or worksforme, etc) instead of only leaving comments. hope to see you there! :)
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