Re: Best approach to use?

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Thu, 2004-02-12 at 09:06, Elijah P Newren wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> Bug 116244 was marked as closed (and assumed fixed) by Martin Wehner
> because there were several duplicates with nautilus 2.2.x, but none with
> 2.3.x, 2.4.x, or 2.5.x.  One reporter (who is also using
> nautilus-2.2.1), who had his bug marked as a duplicate of 116244
> reopened the bug.  He did provide some information for a guess at how to
> reproduce, but nothing else.

For sporadic crashes like this, if it doesn't get fixed, there is a
reasonable chance it is going to be reported over and over. Even when
you search bugzilla before filing, it is easy enough to file a dupe.

So, the logic that "we haven't seen it for a long time, ergo it's fixed"
is not crazy.

> I'm wondering what the best response would be.  This may even be
> nautilus specific, since other products tend to not get as many bug
> reports and therefore don't have the luxury (?) of being able to guess
> at whether a bug has been fixed merely by the volume of reports per
> version.  Here's what I was starting to type up, but maybe I'm going
> about it all wrong :
> 
> Bill: That's really not a good reason to reopen.  You're using the same
> version as the other people in this bug.  Of course, one can question
> why it was closed, but since we got several reports of this crash from
> people using 2.2 and *none* from people using either 2.3, 2.4, or 2.5,
> then I'd say it's pretty safe to assume that upgrading does fix the
> problem.  If you or anyone else discovers that they can duplicate this
> under 2.4 or later, we'll be happy to reopen, but until that
> happens...since there are so many bugs in bugzilla, the maintainers
> aren't likely to get around to looking at a bug that no one can/has
> duplicated in a recent version.  I hope that doesn't sound harsh,
> because it'd be really nice to be able to track down every problem in
> detail, but the reality is that Dave Camp and Alex Larsson are pretty
> busy people.

I would leave out Dave and Alexs' names, so that you don't make it look
like it is all their fault. Otherwise, this seems reasonable. Maybe
delete "I'd say" so that you look more like you are speaking for all of
us ("the Elijah P Newren voice from the sky" approach to things).

Cheers,
Malcolm