Getting to the bugs (was: Re: Goodbye for now, kmail)

[René J.V. Bertin]

On Saturday May 06 2017 09:56:27 Martin Steigerwald wrote:

>> This is the really annoying part: it all just works for me. I don't know
>> what  I'm doing wrong, but it just works. I can't reproduce many of the
>> misbehaviors and issues that users report and without that I can't fix
>> them. Believe me that it really annoys me and that I'd much rather had the
>> most broken setup ever that I could just analyze and fix, but I guess I'm
>> just too lucky (or unlucky, depends on the point of view :-))

I'm afraid that's typical. It's impossible for any developer to reproduce every possible combination of installed software (all of which interacts at least through RAM, disk and CPU competition) or every possible distribution. I presume many developers also run debug builds of their software - and if they have the habit of relying solely on Q_ASSERTs and the like to catch certain issues (I know some who do) they may never see the kind of crash those issues can lead to.

Official AppImages could help here, on Linux and insofar as complex products like KDEPIM can even be provided that way (everything in a single image, Akonadi included?).

>Sometimes I wonder whether it makes sense to invite users that have machines 
>that have these issues to a sprint like event in case they want to work 

Hah, a KDE Genius Bar? :)
Not a bad idea, but you have to have a special psychology to put up with and really delve into issues with otherman's machines!
 
R.