this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024

52 points (91.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26858 readers

1459 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Should I file bug reports for open source projects even if I am bad at writing bug reports? (feddit.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

9 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 9 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes. I'm not sure what you think makes you bad at writing bug reports, but here are tips I give to everyone (my day job involves working with bug reports).

Nominally, a decent bug report should have:

the steps that got you the bug
whether you can reproduce the bug
what you expected to happen instead of the bug

Doing any of these things makes bug reports so much more actionable. You can do it. I believe in you!

Edit: Including a contact method so the software developer can have a conversation with you can also be helpful but not strictly required. Some bug reporting methods do this implicitly, like email bug reports and GitHub issues.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

Much better than not reporting and wondering why the issues never get fixed.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago

You’re not going to get better unless you practice!

(Maybe note in the report that you are unsure how to write a good report and are available to help clarify)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Yes. Even if you get bitched at. Decent people will just ask more questions until they get what they need from you. Better to give more information than none. Try your best.

Actually, sometimes going through every single step on how you ended up with the issue solves it... Done that a few times.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes and you will get better at it from the experience and its a goof thing for your CV. Maybe you even start trying to fix some issues down the line.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Yes. Describe it as best as you can and let the developer reach out to you if you want. A good maintainer will ask follow up questions for more specific stuff that you may not have provided at the start.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In what ways are you bad at writing but reports?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

I can't describe the problems and retest patches reliably.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

If you're unsure, write a draft that gets all the basic ideas while still fresh on your mind. Then look at a past example to give you some ideas of what the maintainers would expect.