Re: Questions on Bug Reporting

["Giovanni Bajo" <giovannibajo at libero dot it>]

Aaron W. LaFramboise wrote:

> 1) If I find a bug, and figure out how to fix it right away, is it
> better to file a bug report in Bugzilla, or just post the patch to
> gcc-patches without opening a PR?

You can post directly a patch. Opening a PR is just a way to help you, to avoid
not losing track of it, etc. For instance, it might happen that the patch is
rejected and you do not want to rework it immediatly.

> 2) There are a whole lot of testsuite failures for the target I am
> primarily interested in, Windows.  After investigating a failure,
> should I file a bug report for it?  Should I submit patches to mark
> the PR as XFAIL if I don't immediately have a fix for it?

There is not a clear rule here, but it is a general agreement that we should
strive to stabilize on 0 unexpected failures. So, yes, the best thing is to
XFAIL them for Windows targets, file a PR about it and cross-reference the PR
in the testcase. This makes mostly sense if you analyze the regression though
so that you actually have something to write in the bug report.

Another very good thing you can do is always post your testsuite results to
gcc-testresults (through contrib/test_summary). The often, the better.

Thanks,
Giovanni Bajo