[Mldonkey-users] prioritizing

[Brett Dikeman]

At 3:18 AM +0100 2/27/03, Pierre Etchemaite wrote:

> I have an idea for a protocol extension (I know, it may not be the best
> moment ;) )

In my humble opinion, no, it's not a good time- the priority should 
be on basic functionality and fixing bugs, then(and only then) adding 
new and exciting features.

I'd suggest that those of us who can't develop, help out by making 
sure bugs are promptly and effectively entered into the bug tracking 
system (http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs?group=mldonkey), and that we 
help test each new cvs release. 'Test' means checking for 
functionality and making sure bugs that developers thought they fixed 
actually IS fixed.  It does not mean "report how many kB/sec you get 
to the mailing list" :-)

Those that CAN develop, go look at the bug tracking system, and see 
if you can't pick off a couple(there are over a hundred currently 
entered!); work off the latest CVS, make a patch, test it, throw it 
out to general public(make sure you name it with the bug # somewhere) 
with lots of information(what it fixes, how to test for what it 
fixes, how to tell if it worked, etc).  If it survives, great- it 
gets thrown into cvs, and there's already a good chance it works 
properly.

This is basically what Pierre does with his patches, right?

A few suggestions for bug reports:

-do NOT submit bugs anonymously!  More information might be needed, 
your help might be required to test for the problem to see if it's 
been fixed by a patch/new CVS version, etc.

-make SURE the bug hasn't been reported already.

-make SURE you're using the latest version from CVS.

-make SURE you read "how to report bugs effectively" 
(http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html)  It is chock 
full of very good suggestions(several of which I need to follow 
myself...)

Brett
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