On Jul 29, 5:39 am, Prefontim <[email protected]> wrote: > I would agree with the general tenor of these responses, in that > complicated apps are not as good for automation or for tracking down > issues once they are found. However, they are much better than simple > tests at actually discovering issues in the first place. If a > complicated app was constructed by the Firebug team, and they simply > just used the app for 15 minutes, they would probably discover > multiple issues. Since they made the app, they would be in a position > to debug it effectively.
We already do this. We use the Firebug code to debug a complex 40kloc application using a wide spectrum of Web and XUL technologies. Rather than 15 minutes, we use it all day every day. And yes it has allowed us to discover many issues in Firebug code. (The application is called "firebug" in case you are interested ;-). I think that your analysis is missing three important aspects related to the scale of these issues. First, while you imagine that 'everyone' has the problems you have, it just cannot be true. With 2.6 million users, only a tiny fraction report problems. Now of course many people will not report problems, but it has to be the case that most of these users do not see "serious bugs". A more likely explanation is that you are special: you have a more complex application, you use more sophisticated features, and you use them in unusual ways. Second, the spectrum of technologies that Firebug supports is large, under-documented, and continually changing. A comprehensive test suite for how these features even work does not exist, let alone a test suite for how to debug these features. We know there are large gaps in our test suite, but if we filled those gaps we would have no time to update Firebug so there would be no point in having the test suite! Third, we have one full time developer (Honza), one loaner (me), and a good number of great contributors who make the difference between floating and sinking. We just do not have the resources to solve every problem. Given this reality, the only way I can see for your bugs to be fixed is for you to produce the test cases. Learn FBTrace (Firebug > Firebug Icon Menu > Open Tracing) or even Chromebug (http:// getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Chromebug_User_Guide) if these bugs are important to you. We are ready to help you with this part. jjb -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Firebug" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/firebug?hl=en.
