[Aptitude-devel] About closing bug reports -- was Bug#573626: aptitude: Terrible Interactive Search Performance

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Hi,

2014-01-24 02:11 Daniel Hartwig:
>On 24 January 2014 05:11, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
><manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> That's why I am not sure if it's better to leave this open or close
>> it.  Realistically, I don't think that this is going to be fixed,
>
>Not immediately, but that is no reason to close it off.  There is real
>work that can be done here, especially after work on startup times.
>
>> and
>> in any case not because of the existence of this problem, so leaving
>> it open will not increase the chances of it being fixed.
>
>Leaving the report open does bring it to the attention of people
>looking to work on real issues.  This task is perhaps interesting to
>someone looking to do non-trivial work.
>
>>  Also it was
>> ignored for the best part of 4 years with no "me toos".
>>
>
>"me toos" is not really the character of bugs.d.o.  Lack of these does
>not indicate disinterest.
>
>> I only see it useful as a reminder, or to leave hints like what you
>> gave above.
>
>Yes.  For these and similar reasons many bugs are left open.  Closing
>the reports does not make the issues go away.

I don't think that it makes sense to add this to the bug report, so
I'm moving it to the list instead (I don't know if it makes much sense
either, but here we go).

Different maintainers have different styles, and the fact that neither
Axel nor I perceived this as a "bug" using aptitude for many years in
old machines and [for me, quite obscure] architectures, it means
simply that "it's not a bug" for us.  The fact that there are no "me
toos" or more bugs reporting the same means that it's not clear if
somebody else in the whole world thinks that this as a problem.
Whereas there are people complaining repeatedly about other things in
bug reports, which probably indicate that they are perceived as more
important problems to fix.  And keeping track on non-bugs detracts
from real issues.

One can always complain about things that are not desirable, like
maybe aptitude using more than 8MB of memory.  Would we want to fix
that as well, if somebody decides to submit a bug?  At which point is
useful to have tons of bug reports that nobody looks at?  Do we want
to keep lots bugs marked as "wontfix" indefinitely?

The purpose of bug reports in projects is to keep track of what's
interesting to manage, help developers and improve the quality of your
program, not a testament to the desires of any user who cared to
submit a bug report.  I don't find it useful to manage bugs endless
bug lists, and in fact I find them harmful, because they distract from
other bugs with a better cost/benefit, or even having discussions like
this.  So closing bugs that one doesn't think that are bugs is
perfectly fine.

So if it was only my decision, I could mark it as "wontfix", for
example, or just close it.  I didn't do in the case that other people,
e.g. you, found it useful to keep around -- specially now that Axel
documented how to mitigate this problem.  You think that it's better
not to close it and said it -- all right.

Frankly, I find your reply a bit patronising and disrespectful, and
not appropriate for the bug report, so please stop doing this.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>