[asterisk-dev] Bugs/patches 16033 and 16590 ignored forever

[Kirill 'Big K' Katsnelson]

On 100416 0852, Steve Murphy wrote:
> While I can understand your frustration, giving up now would make all you've
> done a total waste of time. You will have to keep updating your patches with
> every release to the end of time. You need to see it thru.

Right. I will have to maintain the patches to the end of time, and this 
is what I already do. But, honestly, I do not see any other choice here.

> First of all, did you go in and test your fixes on 1.4 thru trunk?

No. We do not have resources here to do that.

So, just for me to understand, the rule of thumb is that it is better 
not to fix anything at all than fix a bug in 1.6 alone, correct?

> Next, did you test your patch in a rigorous manner?

Define rigorous. The patches have been on a production server for 
months. But the usage pattern is narrow indeed.

> Can you prove there will be side effects?

No. Formal proof of algorithm correctness is a whole another story. I do 
not believe, though, that any piece of code in Asterisk has been proved 
to be correct. C, as a language, especially unyielding to formal proofs.

> Another tactic is reviewboard. For anything but trivial bug fixes, you might
> post your diffs there, and seek comments on fixes there.

Advice taken and appreciated, thank you. But we are talking about a 
2-line patch here (the second of the 2, which is only 3 months old). 
Does not look like it could be posted to the review board without rather 
irritating people there, right?

> Next, did you test each release?

Same as 1.4. Have no resources to test older releases, sorry. Changes 
have been production tested in 1.6.1.6, 1.6.1.12, 1.6.1.13, and 1.6.2.4 
only.

> And next, find someone with commit privileges and a sympathetic ear, and
> sell them on the patch. Help them, and usually, they will help you.

Asked about that on the list already. Nobody.

> Lastly, have patience. It could take months, if not a year or two to
> get some stuff coordinated and into a future release. If your mods
> are seen as possibly disruptive to other parts of the codebase, there
> may be concerns or reservations that will need to be addressed. If
> your fix isn't perceived to the be "best" fix for the problem, then
> that could hold things up.

A discussion would be indeed perfect. Dead silence is not.

Now, an interesting observation. When I report a bug, it gets fixed by a 
developer, I confirm the fix works, and it gets into the 1.6 branches. 
Now, If I both report and fix the same bug, it is doomed to  sit there 
forever. That raises another question -- that is a strong disincentive 
for me to send in a patch *even if I have one*. Instead, I should 
consider my fix "a temporary hack" and then throw it away when an 
"official" fix is implemented by somebody else.

That seems kind of wrong to me, but then, I am feeling feel like I am 
giving an advice when not asked for one.

  -kkm