Re: [Evolution] Need help with Contacts

[Nick Jenkins <nickpj gmail com>]

> Problems with the three that are "lists" were introduced in an
> earlier email message, and have not yet been resolved. Another
> topic :-)

Question number 1: Have you logged these bugs in
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/ ?

Yes, it's more effort to log bugs than it is to have a whinge on the
mailing list.

However, I've done both, and for getting stuff fixed, the bug tracker
wins every time (well, almost every time. Sometimes it's not clear what
the problem is and discussing it helps, or it has annoyed many people
but nobody has reported it and the act of everyone unanimously agreeing
on it being annoying leads to the consensus needed about how the thing
in question should be fixed). But as a general rule, whinging is not
especially effective. Logged bugs however persist until they are
resolved, and provide a central point for all factual information
relevant to the history, causes, and hopefully eventually the fix.

A good bug report should list the exact steps to reproduce the problem,
so that testers & developers who might not know the area in question
intimately can try the same steps, and it preferably describes what
happened, and what you were expecting to happen.

Question number 2: Are you being realistic about the rate at which these
bugs will be fixed?

For example, in the past 2 years, there have been 136 bugs logged in
bugzilla (by me or others) that I have cared about, and of those 136,
approximately 65 (call it 50%) have already been resolved in some way,
with the remaining 50% unresolved.

Now as someone who has logged or cc'ed on a fair few bugs in a variety
of software, IMHO 50% resolved in 2 years is a really good ratio (or
half-life), particularly for a project of Evolution's age and scope.
There are some projects where logging all bugs is like talking to brick
wall, and you get absolutely no useful response, apart from the
occasional "is it still happening in the latest version?" every few
years. Evo is not one of those projects. Evolution is a project where I
personally would not hesitate to log bugs, although it needs to be
understood that it may take some time for them to be fixed (and that in
fact, due to the way half-lives work, that a small proportion may never
be fixed).

Question number 3: Are you being realistic about your entitlement to a
fix?

None of us has any entitlement to a fix, unless either we a) fix it
ourselves or b) employ someone to do it for us or c) sign some sort of
commercial support agreement with some sort of guaranteed resolution or
d) we run a Computer Science class and have made resolving our pet bugs
into a major practical assignment. Personally, since I fall into none of
these categories, I'm deeply grateful for any help I get at all.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Have a good one!

-- All the best,
Nick.