Re: [RDD] definition of bug reports and feature requests (was re: First time install - infinite loop in rdadmin around MySQL)

[Michael <mbarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Andrew Widdowson told me, On 07/14/2009 11:23 AM:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Michael <mbarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
> <mailto:mbarnes@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> 
> 
>     I'm not trying to sound nasty, but IMHO, a user who does not follow
>     directions or makes assumptions and adds steps not warranted or out of
>     sequence is not a basis for a bug report. The program is working
>     properly, there is no bug.  It is user error.
> 
> 
> No offense taken. As a professional software engineer, I am of the 
> opinion that minor user error should not cause the program to lock up 
> silently and forever, with no logging, error reporting, etc. There 
> should be a graceful exit, some sort of logging or error dialog. 
> Programs - particularly those outside of the direct serving path (such 
> as rdadmin) should be fault tolerant, rather than fault susceptible. I'm 
> not suggesting that the program should be able to read the user's mind, 
> of course (especially one with an freewheeling mind ;) ) but just that 
> it explain itself once in a while.
> 
> As for unwarranted steps, by far the common install pattern for software 
> that uses MySQL (or Postgres, etc. etc.) is that the db admin creates 
> the database, and does not delegate create database/drop database rights 
> to the non-admin user. I'm not so thrilled at the idea that the code 
> here could just run "DROP DATABASE rivendell;" at its whim. Sure, it 
> could also just DROP TABLE everything, but I find that about one order 
> of magnitude less likely. The security/sysadmin part of my role wishes 
> to limit user actions according to the principal of least privilege. 
> Given the output of `grep -Ri "DROP DATABASE" sourcecode_dir` I am 
> inclined to remove unnecessary privileges going forward, only restoring 
> them temporarily when a schema upgrade is pending.
> 
> I agree that I did not follow the instructions to the letter, and I will 
> do my best not to introduce outside assumptions into what I do, even if 
> it deviates from common/best practice. When it does do so, can I file a 
> feature request, or is this something that the team is not interested in 
> hearing about?
> 
> Perhaps this is a question better asked of the development list, but 
> along those lines, since it hasn't been commented on - is there an 
> active bug tracker? Does the development team accept placeholder feature 
> requests? Personally I don't care whether filed bugs are reprioritized 
> to bulk, filed bugs are moved to a feature request queue, or they're 
> closed as "will not fix." I'm used to working in software communities 
> where filing bugs, code reviews, feature requests, and so forth are 
> looked at as a positive contribution to the community, rather than an 
> assignment of blame, frustration, or fingerpointing. If it's viewed as 
> the latter here, I would like to know that upfront. If I do in fact 
> encounter unexpected behavior, I would like to have the ability to file 
> a bug, in order to defer to the prioritization and knowledge of the 
> development team. If upfront bugs are unwelcome, but patches are, I'm 
> happy to do that as well - the issue becomes that a non-core developer 
> might write a patch only to have it rejected because there wasn't any 
> communication during development of the patch.. or someone else may 
> already be working on a patch, so there's wasted effort.
> 
> -Andrew Widdowson
> KZSU Engineering
> 

Thank you for your good comments.  Your points are well taken. You hit 
the nail on the head with "As a professional software engineer."  The 
typical Rivendell user doesn't know all that stuff. The chances are high 
that a large percentage of new RD users are new to Linux as well. Those 
were the lines I was thinking of.

Regarding bug reports, at one time there was a mantis bug 
reporting/tracking system in place.  It appears that for whatever 
reason, it is no longer on line.  That could be due to a server change 
or any number of things.  Historically, I haven't seen much use of 
mantis and most issues, complaints, bugs, requests, etc. were discussed 
here on the forum.  I'd like to think that on this forum, "filing bugs, 
code reviews, feature requests, and so forth are looked at as a positive 
contribution to the community" even though it may sound otherwise by 
some responses.  Some people (me included) don't always communicate well 
and comments are not seen as they were intended.  Some of us get 
frustrated and maybe heated, but "assignment of blame, frustration, or 
fingerpointing" is not really intended.

Thanks for giving us the picture from your perspective.

Michael



_______________________________________________
Rivendell-dev mailing list
Rivendell-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.rivendellaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/rivendell-dev