Re: Reporting bugs and bisection

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org>]

On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 09:39:41PM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Adrian Bunk <bunk@kernel.org> wrote:
>...
> >  E.g. if you look at commit f743d04dcfbeda7439b78802d35305781999aa11
> >  (ide/legacy/q40ide.c: add MODULE_LICENSE), how could you determine
> >  automatically that it is a bugfix, and the commit that introduced
> >  the bug?
> 
> Well, a dead giveaway would be:
> "http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10124"

Which could be "There is no driver for my TV card in the kernel."

> >  You can always get some data, but if you want to get usable statistics
> >  you need explicit tags in the commits, not some algorithm that tries
> >  to guess.
> 
> As said above, I don't agree, you can 'guess' very reliably on a large
> dataset. Also, most commits are already 'tagged' in some way or
> another. The trick is to find the pattern in this tagging and use it.
> 
> I hope this clears things up a bit,

I hope you are aware of the non-technical implications if the results 
don't match reality?

E.g. I am proud that my commits do virtually never introduce bugs, so 
any results someone publishes about what I do should better be right
or my first thoughts are somewhere between "fist" and "lawyer". [1]

> Cheers,
> 
> Sverre Rabbelier

cu
Adrian

[1] my actual reaction might only be an angry email, but I hope you
    get the point that wrong results can really piss off people

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed