[opensuse-factory] Helping fix bugs for 11.2

3 Oct 2009

      Hey,

Since we're deeply in bug-fixing mode for 11.2, I thought it'd be
interesting to send some documentation on how to help. I sent some
detailed notes to opensuse-gnome [1], but I'll put here what is relevant
in general (and not just to GNOME).

[1] http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-gnome/2009-10/msg00006.html

(please don't turn this thread in some "I experience this bug and I
think it should get fixed" thread)

How to help
===========

1) Bug fixing

Well, if you can fix bugs, then just do it :-) Nothing really important
to say there.

2) Look if a fix exists elsewhere

You can look if a fix for a bug already exists somewhere. There are
various places where you can check:

  + newer upstream version of a package: if there's a new upstream
    version, maybe it already contains the fix. If it does, then please
    tell us!
  + git/svn/etc.: the fix might already be upstream, but not in a
    released version. In this case, you need to look at git/svn/etc.
    Most projects have a web interface that lets you do this easily (eg,
    http://git.gnome.org/ for GNOME)
  + patches in other distros: it often happens that another distro
    already found the issue and fixed it with a patch. There are links
    to websites where you can see patches from packages in other distros
    at http://live.gnome.org/VendorPatches. Often, I just check at
    Fedora, Mandriva and Ubuntu.
  + upstream bug: if nothing else worked, you can check the upstream
    bugzilla for a similar bug. There might be a patch attached there.

3) Test a potential fix

For some bugs, we already have a potential fix (or we found one with
the steps above), and we need someone to make sure it fixes the issue.
This might imply rebuilding a package locally (to avoid waiting for
the build service), but it's easy to do so with osc. If you need help
for this, just join #opensuse-factory and people will guide you.

(This step is of course quite important so you can definitely help)

4) Provide required information

For some bugs, we need more information. We request this in the bug,
and then we have to wait for somebody to provide the information. And
unfortunately, sometimes we have to wait quite a bit :/

5) Try to reproduce the bug with latest packages

It happens that the bug is just fixed with a package update. So just
running the latest Factory and trying to reproduce the issues can help
identify fixed bugs.

I can't run Factory on my computer
==================================

Yep, this happens and this is understandable. But you can still run it
in a virtual machine and work on most issues there (some issues require
some specific hardware, so those ones are obviously not reproducable in
the virtual machine).

Here's how to do this:

  + install VirtualBox
  + download the latest LiveCD from
    http://download.opensuse.org/factory/iso/
  + launch a virtual machine and boot from the livecd.
  + then, you can try to reproduce issues directly from there, or you
    can first install the livecd.
  + (for GNOME, we recommend some additional steps to help more, see the
     mail sent to opensuse-gnome)
  + if you installed and configured the repositories, make sure to
    update to the latest version of the packages with "zypper ref; zypper dup"

And then you're all set!

I can't stress enough that doing one of the above will help us a lot,
so if you have some free time, please do it!

Cheers,

Vincent

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Vincent Untz

Marco Calistri

Vincent Untz

Wolfgang Rosenauer

Marco Calistri

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