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Re: And another deprecation joke


From: David Kastrup
Subject: Re: And another deprecation joke
Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2011 02:58:11 +0100
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.92 (gnu/linux)

Andy Wingo <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu 08 Dec 2011 21:32, David Kastrup <address@hidden> writes:
>
>>> So please keep up your (useful!) bug reports, but try to give them a
>>> more positive flavor :)
>>
>> Could you give an example how to deliver with a positive flavor a report
>> about deprecation messages talking about the wrong function, telling you
>> in vague terms to use something instead for which no documentation is
>> available, with both the state of documentation and message apparently
>> being the same for years?
>
> Sure!  Here's one from about a week ago:
>
>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.lisp.guile.bugs/5953
>
> There are many more there.
>
> Using bug-guile also has the advantage that it's given an entry in
> debbugs, so that we don't forget about it.

An application "bug-guile" is not available as a command line tool, or
as a guile function in a standard installation of Guile on Ubuntu.

The Guile reference manual for the currently distributed version (1.8.8)
has a long chapter "Reporting Bugs" that starts with

    Any problems with the installation should be reported to
    <address@hidden>.

An application "guile-bug" is mentioned nowhere.  The most up to date
version of the reference manual, namely that in the repository, can be
read at
<URL:http://hydra.nixos.org/build/1574618/download/2/guile.html/Reporting-Bugs.html#Reporting-Bugs>.
And look and behold, it does not contain a mention of bug-guile either.

You really need to get rid of this "oral tradition" habit and actually
bother writing things down in the manual where people have a chance to
see them.  I often get the "oh, we won't bother updating the manual in
the 1.8 Guile branch anymore, that is so yesterday" brush-off, but it is
not like you actually bother updating the 2.0 Guile manual all that much
either.

So how about starting with the bug reporting instructions, and actually
writing down what a reporter should do to avoid being told his way of
reporting bugs has gone out of fashion?

Then you have a better reason to tell people they are doing it wrong.

-- 
David Kastrup




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