Re: Reporting bugs: there is nothing to gain in frustrating reporters

[Roberto Bagnara <bagnara at cs dot unipr dot it>]

Andrew Pinski wrote:
>
> On Jun 16, 2005, at 10:58 AM, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
>
>> Daniel Berlin wrote:
>>
>>> Again, *please* provide examples other than "The bugmasters are mean".
>>
>>
>> Don't invent quotes. I never said anyone was "mean." And other people
>> have provided explicitly links to germane bugs.
>
>
> Four out of how many?
> The explantion for all of those four:
>   http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21067
> "
> Note GCC does not know about the rounding mode, in fact the round mode
> is only changeable in C99
> by the #pragma which GCC does not do right now and I thought that is a
> different PR already."
>
> How could this be considered rude, I was just stating a fact.

First, I would like to clarify I do not consider it rude.

But I do not consider it a good thing that, after this superficial comment
of yours, you did not even care to reply to my further arguments and question.
This is precisely the kind of behavior that frustrates me and, I guess,
frustrates most other bug reporters.

>   http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=21032
>
> "
> Note neg just flips a bit so it is correct anyways and there is no loss
> of precession.
>
> This also happens on ppc darwin, I don't know what to make of this.  A C
> person has to comment to say
> something about this.
> "
>
> I said someone else has to comment on this, so I was saying I don't know
> for sure.

You said something incorrect ("Note neg just flips a bit so it is correct
anyways and there is no loss of precession"), then again you failed to reply
to an explicit question and to further arguments I added.  You also failed
to reply when I pointed out, in another comment, that this was indeed
a regression from 3.3.  Then leaving the bug UNCONFIRMED for months...
OK, you did not have time to check the standard... perhaps it is the
word "bugmaster" that generates unreasonable expectations.

>   http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=19092
> Huh, there was no negative thing in there at all from me or either
> Wolfgang.
> Maybe "This should be low priority, since we only accept invalid code.
> "  but Wolfgang
> found a rejects valid case in about an hour.

That link was included by mistake, in fact.  I apologize.

>   http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=12963
> This is the only one which was closed, in fact I still think it should
> be a warning
> unconditional.

As I said above, perhaps it is the word "bugmaster" that should be changed.
It is hard to believe that a master can advocate an unconditional,
architecture-dependent warning that a user cannot switch off without
switching of _all_ the other warnings and that can only be avoided
by writing non-portable code.  This concerning the substance.
Concerning the form, you closed the bug without even caring, again,
to address the points I raised and the explicit questions I have asked.

To summarize, why should I, simple user, spend hours investigating a
suspicious behavior of GCC when you, bugmaster,  take the liberties
of giving superficial and/or wrong answers without even apologizing,
of not answering altogether, of not looking at the standard documents,
of not even reading carefully what me and others write?  It is not
a matter of rudeness, but rather a matter of technical and social
carelessness.  Why you seem to feel an obligation to intervene
on bug reports for which you appear to have neither the competences
nor a willingness to obtaining them by careful consideration of
the issues that are brought to your attention and of the standards?

Now please do not tell me that you are a volunteer: we all are
volunteers here and we are all contributing to Free Software in
one way or another.  Being a volunteer is not an excuse for not
paying attention to the technical and human aspects of our
volunteer work.

> -- Hitler (just to stop this thread)

I don't believe that stopping the thread would solve the problem.
You probably want to say that continuing it would not solve it
either.  This is sad, if it means we have to live with it...
All the best,

    Roberto

--
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara@cs.unipr.it