The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Eclipse Bugs and How to Increase your Chance Getting Heard. Understand the Eclipse Community, and learn basic Netiquette about dealing with Bugs and Enhancement Requests, that help YOU and Committers engage in a real Win-Win Situation.

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -
Eclipse Bugs and how to
Increase your Chance Getting Heard
Martin Oberhuber
Pawel Piech
Wind River
EclipseCon 2010 | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | made available under the EPL v1.0

2. Motivation
More Bugs
+
Better Bugs
=
Better Products
+
Less Work
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3. Myth #1: Eclipse is a Product
Eclipse Support is worth every penny you pay for it!
$$ 0,00
Eclipse is a Community
Bugzilla is its Communication Medium
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4. Bugzilla Community
4431
Users
8147 11869
1032
24246
24096
Committers
Bugs opened
1/Mar/2009 – 1/Mar/2010
Submitted
Resolved
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

5. What Committers Want
• Work in the interest of their employer
• Improve the Code
• Maintain proper Architecture
• Help the Community help themselves
• Win new Contributors
• Prioritize Properly
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6. What Committers Hate
• Lose time on fruitless discussions
• Have others tell them what to do
• Start work that will be unfinished
• Compromise their product vision
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

7. How to make your Committer Happy
• Concise, clear bug descriptions
– Include your Build ID, configuration, host platform, component
• Help > About (Build ID), > Configuration Details
• Window > Show View > Error Log
• PDE Plug-in-Spy: Alt+Shift+F1
– Steps to Reproduce
– Expected vs Actual Behavior
– Why does this matter to you?
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

8. How to stay sane yourself
• Concise: Don't overdo the description!
– Committers don't want to read page-long descriptions
– Screenshots help a lot
• Bugzilla “Remember as Bookmarkable Template”
– Re-use your same configuration info
• Find existing bugs
– Save the time of reporting when somebody reported already
– Tip: Search “Comment” for backtrace
• It is OK to not know the right component to report against
– On triage, committers will know how to dispatch
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

9. Tips for increasing success ratio
• Make yourself known
– Submitting good reports again and again will help
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

10. Tips for increasing success ratio
• Contribute a patch!
– Developers are thinking and talking code
– Start with some simple things
– Expect to evolve: Discuss – deliver – repeat
• Contribute a test case
– Reproducable with plain Open Source
– As small a possible
– Ideally, a code snippet (but instructions also OK)
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

11. Contributors
4431
Users
8147 11869
1032 531
24246 1457
24096 1415
Committers Contributors
Bugs opened
1/Mar/2009 – 1/Mar/2010
Submitted
Resolved
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

12. Enhancement Requests
• Myth: Nobody's looking at Enhancement Requests
– But committers WANT to improve their code!
• Tips for enhancement requests
– Describe what you need and why
– “As a CDT User, I want to use the commandline to load a file
into Eclipse, such that I can use the Editor from within the
context of my test cases.”
DONT talk about the solution.
DO talk about the value for you.
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

13. What if... (Grievance Handling)
• You feel misunderstood or mistreated?
– http://wiki.eclipse.org/Mylyn_Contributor_Reference
• Be honest: Have you been doing everything right?
– Gently try to reset communications.
• Resetting the communication don't help?
– Ask fellow users, mailing list, PMC, …
• Still escalated?
– file a bug with http://wiki.eclipse.org/Architecture_Council.
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

14. What if... (Grievance Handling)
• I'm just ignored?
– Ping on the bug. Committers are also just human and might
have overlooked your initial entry or been busy.
• I'm still ignored?
– Ask on the mailing list. Understand Eclipse Release Cycles.
• I'm STILL IGNORED? WHAT THE...
– Ask on the project's PMC mailing list.
• STILL NO RESPONSE?
– Check your E-Mail system. The fault must be on your end.
– Or, file a bug with http://wiki.eclipse.org/Architecture_Council.
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0

15. Summary
• Bugzilla is all about communication.
• With just a little bit of “Netiquette”, you'll be more successful.
• This is a win-win situation.
And now...
Make this year's “New Bug” count jump from
37000 to 47000! (with 85% Fix Rate)
Eclipse Bugs | © 2010 Wind River Systems, Inc. | all contents except logos
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and trademarks made available under the EPL v1.0