linux-kernel - Re: Reporting bugs and bisection

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Message-ID: <20080416212554.GV1677@cs181133002.pp.htv.fi>
Date:	Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:25:54 +0300
From:	Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org>
To:	sverre@...belier.nl
Cc:	git@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	James Morris <jmorris@...ei.org>,
	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>, david@...g.hm,
	Stephen Clark <sclark46@...thlink.net>,
	Evgeniy Polyakov <johnpol@....mipt.ru>,
	"Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...k.pl>, Tilman Schmidt <tilman@...p.cc>,
	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu, Mark Lord <lkml@....ca>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>, jesper.juhl@...il.com,
	yoshfuji@...ux-ipv6.org, jeff@...zik.org, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
	David Newall <davidn@...idnewall.com>
Subject: Re: Reporting bugs and bisection

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 11:05:17PM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 10:53 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@...nel.org> wrote:
> >  To avoid any misunderstandings:
> >
> >  This is not in any way meant against you personally.
> 
> Thanks for pointing it out, I wasn't quite sure, but assumed that :).

Sorry, I was a bit overreacting since I see too often people putting 
some data into some statistics or graph and drawing conclusins without 
paying attention to whether their data allows these conclusions at all.

> >  But saying things like " X% of your commits introduced bugs" is not a
> >  friendly thing, and wrong data could be quite hurting.
> 
> Yes, it could be, and I agree that conclusions shouldn't be based on
> the details, but on the bigger picture. Also, I think it should (at
> first) be used mainly as an indicator, of where attention might be
> required. I mean, if it points out that one contributor almost always
> commits buggy code,

I would assume that in all projects the main maintainers already have an 
impression of how good the quality of the patches of each main 
contributor is.

In much more complex ways than a number could express.

> you don't have to present them with those
> statistics right away. Instead you can ask the program where it bases
> it's conclusions on, and research them yourself.

Sooner or later someone will run the program for the Linux kernel, 
write a paper about the results, and publish his research somewhere.

>...
> Cheers,
> 
> Sverre Rabbelier

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

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