Re: RFC: starting a kernel-testers group for newbies

Adrian Bunk
2008-05-01T13:03:18Z

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 12:30:00PM +0200, Enrico Weigelt wrote:
>
> <big_snip />
>
> Hi folks,
>
>
> what do you think about Gentoo's "bug-wrangler" concept ?
> Maybe could do something similar:
>
> An Tester group (which eg. should be the entry point for newbies),
> is responsible for receiving bug reports from users (maybe even
> distro maintainers who're not directly involved in kernel dev.).
> They try to reproduce the bugs and find out as much as they can,
> then file a report to the actual kernel devs (just critical bugs
> are directly kicked to the devs with high priority). Maybe this
> group could also keep users informed about fixes and give some
> upgrade advise, etc.
>
> This way we can build an good technical support (independent
> from distributors ;-P), newbies can learn on the job and te
> load on kernel devs is reduced, so they can better concentrate
> on their core competences.
>
> What do you think about this ?

Andrew already does more or less this.

The problems are:
- kernel bugs tend to very quickly reach the state where you need expert
knowledge in some area, and there's definitely not much room for
newbies in bug handling
- "try to reproduce the bugs" works for much software, but in the
kernel bugs often tend to depend on some specific hardware

> cu

cu
Adrian

--

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"Only a promise," Lao Er said.
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