Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
That is exactly my point. Mark chastises people for talking about
testing, implying that we are lazy for not providing patches.
I don't deny that reality. Mark seems to feel that fixing bugs is as
easy as testing and bug reporting, and it is not.
Actually, I don't agree with either of the statements ascribed to me,
and if I conveyed that sentiment, I apologize. To be clear, I think
testing, automated and otherwise, and bug reporting, and bug-mastering
are all very valuable. My point was simply that once you have the tests
and bug reports, someone has to fix the bugs before the users see benefit.
CodeSourcery struggles with exactly the same problem; we have worked
hard to set up some test automation for our ARM builds, and it's working
well, but we're not (yet!) as disciplined as we want to be about
analyzing and fixing the failures. I think the reason is that the
testing is something you work hard to set up once, and then, roughly
speaking, you just sit back and let the computer work hard forever; the
analysis/fixing is an ongoing project that requires people to work hard
on a regular basis.
Once I get my automated GCC bug-fixing bot finished I am going to have
an easy life. Unfortunately, I use GCC to build the bot, and I'm
getting an ICE in reload...
--
Mark Mitchell
CodeSourcery, LLC
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(916) 791-8304
