Maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe there's a perl culture aspect, where people are expected to hack on their tools, even "end-users".
No, in fact not at all, but if you want someone else to do it you're expected to provide them with as much information as they need to fix it. Whenever you report a bug you'd like to see fixed, look at the info you're sending and ask yourself "if I received this much info, would I be able to work on the problem?" If the answer is no, then you need to add more.
I can appreciate that it can take a little time to sum up the info so that you might prefer to ask first if anyone else has seen that. When no one answers however, it's that more info is needed and you have to repost. Also adding the bug to rt.cpan.org is much appreciated.
You also need a little patience, people are doing this for free and if it's a boring and non-obvious bug, it could take a little time (eg until the next rush to release when people go through the bugs list). If you need something fixed urgently and you're a business running AxKit, remember that there are very competent contractors on this list. Just because it's open source doesn't mean things get fixed instantly and a little money here or there can help. For a normal bug it'll cost you one contracting day or so.
I understand that, and indeed I have contributed although in a peripheral way, by providing OS X / fink instructions and a bit of work on the Wiki. But perhaps I need to be hacking on the perl code to really qualify?
It's not about that, it's about the fact that if none of the developers encounters the same bug you do, and it really doesn't look glamourous, it'll take some time before it is addressed. That's only natural.
I never claimed that it was an "AxKit problem" or that anyone on this list should do anything about it. I do find it a bit odd that no one else is running on Debian 2.2 any more, but hey, whatever, it's pretty old.
Some people may be, but iconv is such a common PITA that those people likely skipped it knowing it was Debian's bug.
We could prolly skip that test on uname I guess.
Well maybe I just set up an incorrect set of expectations when I joined the list. AxKit is on 1.6.1 and it's not claimed to be beta software. It seems to be in production use in at least a few systems. Normally (it seems to me) at this stage an end-user isn't expected to hack the code in the tool in order to make it work, but that's the strong sense I get of what's expected here.
AxKit ain't beta, I had it in production ages ago. However it'll always have bugs...
-- Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Research Engineer, Expway http://expway.fr/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
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