Is reporting bug to Qt a waste of time?

[Thuan_Firelight]

Does anyone at Qt actually looks at bug reports? I reported a bug about a month ago, https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-53744, and its status hasn't change (still marked as "Reported") a bit. It appears to be assigned to the CTO, Lars Knoll. Does he actually look into bug report? I thought there will be less senior members for that.

[KeithS]

I can only say that my experience of working for software companies over many years is that bugs will be fixed according to priority, and one important weighting factor is how much money is involved. If it's a bug that affects lots of paying customers, it will get fixed. Of course being open source there is always the opportunity to fix it yourself!

[SGaist]

Hi,

To add to @KeithS, it's currently the summer vacations time so there's a normal slowdown in activities during it.

[JKSH]

Hi @Thuan_Firelight,

First of all, on behalf of the Qt Project, thank you for reporting the bug that you found.

Rest assured that such reports are not a waste of time. See the graph at https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG/ -- over the past month, almost 400 reports were resolved at a steady pace. The graph also shows that reports come in much faster than they can be resolved though (>600 reports in the past month), so not every bug can be squashed in a timely manner, unfortunately.

If you want to bring your report to the attention of other people, try subscribing and posting to the Development mailing list. Qt engineers are active on that list.

[Thuan_Firelight]

Hi @JKSH
You are welcome. I was just curious how the process goes or is there any chance default assigned to the wrong person (as I mentioned previously, wouldn't a less senior developer be assigned to look into bug reports instead of CTO?). Not expecting it to be fixed within days, but at least moving to "Open" state after a month would be more encouraging than it getting stuck at "Reported".

[JKSH]

Hi @Thuan_Firelight,

I was just curious how the process goes or is there any chance default assigned to the wrong person (as I mentioned previously, wouldn't a less senior developer be assigned to look into bug reports instead of CTO?).

If I'm not mistaken, the bug report system auto-assigns the ticket according to the "components" specified in the ticket. The assignee (or someone else browsing who has write permissions) can then re-assign as appropriate.

You're right, a CTO's duties leave very little time for evaluating/fixing bugs

Not expecting it to be fixed within days, but at least moving to "Open" state after a month would be more encouraging than it getting stuck at "Reported".

Makes sense. Would you like to ping the Development mailing list?

[Thuan_Firelight]

@JKSH I will try pinging the Development mailing list in a couple of days (have to figure out where the mailing list is and how to post on it).

Just to balance this one out, I reported another bug and it was again assigned to the CTO but someone took over it really quick and a fix went in with 2-3 days :) So maybe the other bug just fell through the crack and was unnoticed.

[micland]

My 2 cent:
Sure it's annoying if you open a ticket that will never leave the state "reported".
But the bugtracker is not a heap of forgotten orphan problems, for me it's part fo the documentation that might give some additional information, what's working, what's not working, and why not (and what are possible workarounds).
So the reporting is no waste of time because even if the ticket get's no attention by the Qt developers it might give a hint to other Qt-using developers.

[kshegunov]

@Thuan_Firelight

Have to figure out where the mailing list is and how to post on it

Here you go: http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest

[kegon]

Almost all the bugs I have reported have either been fixed, marked not fixable, someone has found a workaround or I found a workaround. Eventually.

Unless you are a commercial customer then you just have to wait. It's worth reporting just so that you get a ping when there's some action on it.

I've had fastest responses when I attach screenshots and a compilable project, even though it's a PITA.

[JKSH]

@Thuan_Firelight, I'm glad to hear you've had a positive experience to balance out the bad one :)

@kegon said:

I've had fastest responses when I attach screenshots and a compilable project, even though it's a PITA.

Yes, taking the time to attach pictures/code is incredibly helpful.

The engineers are normally swamped in tasks already. Having to read through long descriptions, or trying to decipher vague/incomplete info, is time-consuming. In general, pictures and/or code make it much easier for the engineer to figure out the problem and identify a solution, which means the reporter is much more likely to get a useful response sooner.