Since normal users & programmers are in the ridiculous situation that there is no official way to report OS4 bugs, it has been suggetsed to me that the best way is to get an OS4 beta tester to be able to reproduce the bug...

...only problem is, I haven't a clue who most of the beta testers are, nor who would be willing to help try reproducing some bug, nor who has a set-up similar to mine. And I suspect that most normal users & programmers are in the same boat.

So this is a request for all OS4 beta testers, who are willing to help reproduce bugs found by others, to announce themselves. Hopefully we can get a good list together. Either that or maybe Hyperion will see the error of their ways and supply an email address or web page where bugs can be reported... (Then OS4 beta testers can follow-up bugs that Hyperion deems important, perhaps by emailing the person/people who reported the bug.)

Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:16 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 01-Apr-2010 at 09:58 PM.

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@ChrisH

Quote:

Then OS4 beta testers can follow-up bugs that Hyperion deems important, perhaps by emailing the person/people who reported the bug.

Isn't that what happens quite routinely right now?

You know several of the more active betatesters - I could name a few but won't - all that anyone with a "bug" has to do is describe it properly and I assure you it gets tested and reported on the internal ML very quickly if it is reproducible. I can think of several real bugs that have been described, reproduced, reported and fixed, but you won't get a fix until the next update.

Unfortunately there are also a few vocal people here who "discover" bugs regularly and make a lot of noise about them, while the rest of us shake our heads in disbelief, since the "bugs" are completely unreproducible or non-existent. Those don't get reported.

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@ChrisH

Rigo is one of the Beta testers. I know I can say that becuase its in an interview here.

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@ChrisH
Quote:

Since normal users & programmers are in the ridiculous situation that there is no official way to report OS4 bugs, it has been suggetsed to me that the best way is to get an OS4 beta tester to be able to reproduce the bug...

I have been having the same feeling.. I also see another problem though.. Hyperion/Devs sometimes seem to take it personally when someone post a thread about a bug and sometimes even respond blaming the problem on the user, even though it is a bug/issue that others have been experiencing as well. I think this stops people from even bothering to "report" bugs.

I wish they could setup a site where people could just submit bugs/issues.

@tonyw
Quote:

You know several of the more active betatesters - I could name a few but won't - all that anyone with a "bug" has to do is describe it properly and I assure you it gets tested and reported on the internal ML very quickly if it is reproducible. I can think of several real bugs that have been described, reproduced, reported and fixed, but you won't get a fix until the next update.

So where do one report bugs??
Quote:

Unfortunately there are also a few vocal people here who "discover" bugs regularly and make a lot of noise about them, while the rest of us shake our heads in disbelief, since the "bugs" are completely unreproducible or non-existent. Those don't get reported.

This is why a bug report site would be better. This would also stop people from reporting duplicate bugs that have already been reported/submitted. If i came across a bug now then i would have no idea if it has been reported before or if OS4.x team even knows of it.

@Tomas

Just report it here or on amigans, as people do now. There are so many false alarms that someone has to filter out the real bugs from those that are not bugs at all. Once we can reproduce a bug, we report it formally and it gets fixed.

The problem with having a bug report site is that we would immediately get lots of noise and soon the developers would ignore it altogether. You have probably half a dozen active betatesters here, let them check and process your bug reports just as they do now.

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@tonyw
Quote:

The problem with having a bug report site is that we would immediately get lots of noise and soon the developers would ignore it altogether.

OK, and what do you think about a webside where BT's can publish confirmed OS4.x Bugs that where reported by the users?

@tonyw

Quote:

Just report it here or on amigans, as people do now.

Sorry, but this does not seem very efficient way. Every project I follow how a place where you can open an issue. Be that Bugzilla, Launchpad, Google Code or Trac. When all bugs are in same place I can look for my problems, what version resolves it and if there's no fix yet, can I hack around it? This makes me involved even if I don't contribute code.

People are used to be able open issue. I can do it for my Linux distribution, favorite framework, bank, ISP, server space provider and 100s of different service providers.

ChrisH is right. It is annoying for paying customers.

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@tonyw Quote:

You know several of the more active betatesters

Maybe I do, although who knows if they are *still* active beta testers? And *most* OS4 users/programmers probably do not know who is a beta tester. And even if we did know, it still seems highly inefficient to have to ask each individual tester whether they are willing to listen to my problems.

For example, I know another programmer who has said he knows lots of bugs, but doesn't report them because of the current situation (signal/noise ration on the forums). The problem isn't with him, the problem is the lack of a way to easily report OS4 bugs.

Quote:

all that anyone with a "bug" has to do is describe it properly and I assure you it gets tested and reported on the internal ML very quickly if it is reproducible

I don't have any faith in that, because there is usually no feedback about whether anyone to do with OS4 has actually reported the problem. The only way to be *sure* it's seen is to make a big fuss about it, with a potentially inflamatory title - and given all the problems THAT causes, I really don't like doing it.

I'm sure other people feel the same way. There needs to be some formal way of reporting bugs.

Quote:

Unfortunately there are also a few vocal people here who "discover" bugs regularly and make a lot of noise about them, while the rest of us shake our heads in disbelief, since the "bugs" are completely unreproducible or non-existent.

All the more reason for there to be a formal way of reporting bugs.

Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:15 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:13 AM.
Last edited by ChrisH on 02-Apr-2010 at 08:12 AM.

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@Tomas Quote:

I also see another problem though.. Hyperion/Devs sometimes seem to take it personally when someone post a thread about a bug and sometimes even respond blaming the problem on the user, even though it is a bug/issue that others have been experiencing as well. I think this stops people from even bothering to "report" bugs.

Yes! For example, I've reported a couple of valid bugs on the web forums where some official OS4 person immediately jumped on me to say it was a feature not a bug (or that I was at fault), presumably without thinking about it carefully first because it was a public web forum, and things degenerated rather quickly from there. A *private* formal/official way of reporting bugs would solve that.

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@tonyw Quote:

There are so many false alarms that someone has to filter out the real bugs from those that are not bugs at all. Once we can reproduce a bug, we report it formally and it gets fixed.

All the more reason for an official/formal reporting process, which can then filter the bug reports.

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@ZeroG Quote:

OK, and what do you think about a webside where BT's can publish confirmed OS4.x Bugs that where reported by the users

I don't think it's a requirement that reported (but unverified) bugs are publicially visible on such a web site, but having them public would still generate less noise than now, because they wouldn't be "in your face" on the web forums that people visit.

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@ChrisH

I'm a beta tester and I do check posts on AW which have explicit topics like "calculator crashes" or similar and try to reproduce the issues described and help users fix the problem if the issue is on their end.

It's more convenient for people to post their issues on forums than a dedicated bug tracker as it's easier to use a forum to discuss something, add links, screenshots, etc.

I keep an eye on the topics here but there is a dedicated forum on amigans.net for reporting os4 bugs already.

Last edited by AlexC on 02-Apr-2010 at 09:14 AM.

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@ChrisH

+1 of course..
imho,
online presence and user/devs feedback and interaction is bad around hyperion and partners.

it wouldn't be that hard to open a new website and setup a basic lamp system where ppl could register an account and start reporting bugs. os4 devs could look at it in their own pace... (or even just look at bugs which have been reported the most by users..)
and reply like:
"bug has been confirmed, its being worked on, watch this space, news will follow as progress is being made" or other kind of comments such as: "bug report closed: reason unreproductible" or whatever other reason..
putting such site online is what ? 1week work at worst. using existing bug report system such as mantis, trac etc ...

aeon site is another example.. the puzzle was kinda fun in january.. but also, it looked incredibly bad. i mean, the layout, the colors etc..
following the puzzle anyway, they should have put, at least, a better looking single page, with what transpired so far, and a final note saying the thing wil come before summer and the site would be updted at that time. but no, they left the unproffesionaly looking pages to rot there..

another example is hyperion website.
often when a new release of os4 gets outs, the server is brought down and it takes them quite some time to fix it.
how hard is it to log remotely via ssh and restart apache while searching to solve the problem in the meantime? at least users gets a chance to access data while the problem is being worked on.
imho they should go for a failover system using lvs (linux virtual system)
using pc from dumpster, say 10.. and spread the load over the 10 clones. lvs access them for example in round robin fashion and do health checks too, so if one of the 10 clones is brought down, lvs will bypass it until it come up again meanwhile the other 9 clones will continue to provide availability. so zero downtime.

for basic users all this i'm speaking about is a bit complex but for ppl working in that field its pretty basic.. i mean:
- linux and lamp stack skills (including knowledge to create reasonably good looking pages with php ... and do sql backups
- lvs for high availability

to me its kind of like golden rules of online presence and dev/user interaction and feedback but well ..
maybe its not a problem of knowledge or resources here. maybe its a problem of will.
like some sort of obscure marketing scheme.. i dunno..
or maybe the devs just can't be bothered with such tasks and prefer to work on more interesting stuffs, and beside them there's noone else to do that kind of things?

anyway the need of an user oriented bug report system seems obvious to me.
since the beta team cannot catch everyhting..

Hello,

OK, there are an Amigans forum for reporting problems found (for example my USB problem with FAT32). Someone said, from the team side, that a bug found by a user is comfirmed and added on the bugzilla ??? Never.

- How can the user could know if this one is reported on AOS4 bugzilla (know recently the name) ???

- How can the user could know the state of this problem ??? lots of users wish to see this problem resolved with AOS4.1U1 (just a hope because no news available)but unfortunately not (discovered by testing the problem with AOS4.1U1). Now the user must wait another AOS4 update in the futur (when ) and hope again to see this problem resolved or not......

That means users shouldn't use FAT32 with AOS4.1U1 forever ?????

- The same for the pthreads.library with all thread in wait semaphore problem sometime (with a program who use this library and unfortunately all the thread fall in wait semaphore (bad luck). I have the chance to konw that a new version of this library is actually in betatesting because this problem has been found last Xmas (but I have found this problem more before last xmas !!!


It's not a problem for my to have this 2 problems on AOS4.1U1 but It's really hard for the user to live without news about the state of the problems reported. I really would like to see a user acess to the bugzilla (with read only surely) just to check if a problem found is really added on the AOS4 bugzilla.

Last edited by Mrodfr on 02-Apr-2010 at 10:34 AM.
Last edited by Mrodfr on 02-Apr-2010 at 10:25 AM.
Last edited by Mrodfr on 02-Apr-2010 at 10:25 AM.

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@Mrodfr

Im with Mrodfr. Would be nice for a user to see if the devs knows of a bug and if its fixed etc. Thanks to os4depot we can at least see some of 3rd party apps bugs, what is there and what is fixed etc.

But then this is for other systems too. I got a new firmware for ps3. Only thing they say is that support for otherOS (linux) has been removed. Im more interest also is some bugs have been fixed in for example webbrowser, music player, video player etc. Maybe not too much details when upgrading it but at least some page to read for the interested people. Same for my LED TV. I upgrade the firmware but it doesnt mentation whats new, whats fixed. Ok so you upgrade and dont know a thing about it :)

Take my Xtreamer. Always info on whats added, whats changed, whats fixed etc. Thanks for that Xtreamer.net :)

Last edited by Kicko on 02-Apr-2010 at 11:42 AM.

@AlexC Quote:

there is a dedicated forum on amigans.net for reporting os4 bugs already

I didn't know what purpose the "AmigaOS4 feedback" forum had. If it is OS4 bugs/etc, then perhaps Hyperion can bless it as the official way to report bugs? Then everyone will know about it & use it, and we will all live happily ever after :)

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@ChrisH

Could we not use the Developer Projects Forum ?

Quote:

The 'official' place for hardware and software developers to post factual information on their projects, ask for betatesters, and for users to report bugs to existing project threads. Developers, post your project info here!

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@all
I wrote:
Quote:

there is no official way to report OS4 bugs, (but) it has been suggested to me that the best way is to get an OS4 beta tester to be able to reproduce the bug...

Quote:

So this is a request for all OS4 beta testers, who are willing to help reproduce bugs found by others, to announce themselves. Hopefully we can get a good list together.

Since no OS4 beta-testers have answered yes to my request, I have to assume that no OS4 beta-testers are willing to help in that regard. Therefore the original suggestion seems unworkable

Although I have received several offers for OS4 beta testers to help me personally report bugs, that sadly rather misses the point.

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Yeah,

Girls and Guys, reveal yourselves....

Maybe they could get a "description-tag" under their nicks?

CU,
Mario

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