Re: Bug reports and documentation updates
Re: Bug reports and documentation updates
- Subject: Re: Bug reports and documentation updates
- From: Wade Tregaskis <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 13:23:46 +1000
This is in response to all those trying to argue that it's all about
severity, priority, reproducibility, etc etc.
Courtesy of Keith Bauer on the Mac OpenGL list, with my own comments
inserted:
* It's apparently an Apple bug, since it affects at least Radeon 9000
mobility, GeForce4Ti and GeForce4MX cards (and now you say Rage 128
Mobility too...).
Wide spread bug, effecting the majority of Apple's power-users.
* I had assumed it to be something to do with MAX_TEXTURE_SIZE, since
on the three cards I mentioned, halving the dimensions fixes the
problem. That halving the dimensions for you doesn't fix the problem
is concerning...
Problem is serious because there is no reliable workaround.
* The bug was introduced in Mac OS X 10.2.0 and has been "fixed" in
just about every minor update since. Needless to say, it still
exists.
Sounds familiar.. who here has used PPP since 10.2.1? I lost count of
the number of times that was 'fixed'.
* The bug manifests itself differently on each of the different
cards. On 4MXs, for example, it generally causes the window server
to slow to one frame every 3-5 minutes. On 4Tis, you generally see
random corruption.
I'd say that these are serious problems, wouldn't you? I would
consider the window server being that slow as the computer having
locked up, which is as serious as you can get, short of an iTunes
updater.
* We've submitted a bug report with a very simple test case which has
now been closed twice with "cannot reproduce". It fails on at least
three different out-of-the box configurations, and the failures have
been confirmed by several list members. r. 3249423
I don't even do OpenGL stuff and I've heard mention of this before.
How many developers need to have their days ruined before it their
voices get counted?
Needless to say, We're fairly frustrated with this...
Needless to say, this is a very common frustration for a lot of people.
It seems inarguable that a lot of people don't like the bug reporter*,
for various reasons. It's no good saying "it works for me", because
this is an issue where negatives are worth more than positives - these
problems must be fixed. I have lists of dozens of significant problems
with many Apple products, some with exact details of how to reproduce
them, but I'm not going to waste my time submitting them, and that, as
I've said, is Apple's loss.
On the topic of reproducibility, it seems that Apple don't perform code
audits. Back when I was releasing my own shareware apps, if a user
gave me a bug report which I couldn't reproduce, well, I went through
the code and looked for it anyway. It was an opportunity to check over
my code, if nothing else, but I also trusted my users. If they saw a
bug, I assumed it was there until I could prove otherwise. We don't
seem to get that credit from Apple. Granted, often it *is* the
developer's ("end-user's") bug, not Apple's, but even then it could be
that the documentation was confusing, or missing, or whatever else.
As a pre-empt to the inevitable response, I never considered checking
code to be a waste of time or money (I didn't earn that much, so I
never had much money to consider wasted anyway ;). It could only make
my product better. You can always add more documentation, add a few
extra features, improve error handling, etc etc. Looking over code is
never wasted effort, no matter how good you presume it is.
I used to think bugs were annoying things that had to be fixed. Now,
thanks to the attitude of large software companies (not Apple in
particular), I'm starting to think of them as things which are just
there, and will never change. This is not the attitude I ever want to
have, as a developer myself.
Wade Tregaskis
-- Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
* = As I've said before, I have the utmost respect for Apple's
developers. When I do get to speak with them directly, they're
fantastic. I wonder what could be going wrong in the time and space
between them and the bug reporter's submit button.
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