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My comment was a joke, obviously. However, it's not that difficult to provide that kind of support and bugfixing. It's not like developing something new.


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> Also wouldn't most devs much rather fix bugs in an existing app than add features?

No, for a few reasons: 1) it's often tedious work 2) often the bug has been around a long time and nobody's really noticed or cared, so how important could it be? 3) organizations rarely reward this work.


> It seems like the problem you are trying to solve is potential users quickly dismissing projects with too many open issues.

No. The issue I am talking about is that there is no clear separation between things which must be addressed (bugs) and things which don't (feature requests). There is no possible way I could have made that more clear. I have repeated this in almost every comment on this topic. You seem to be intentionally misunderstanding me at this point.


> Nobody said the software is bug free.

The comment I replied to literally said exactly that.


> "This is primarily a bug fix"

Followed later by

> "Add an Include directive for ssh_config(5) files"

Edit: my comment wasn't intended as negative, more a pleasant surprise. How often does "primarily a bug fix" release include functionality thats been requested by users for literally years?

Edit2: wow. Very unfortunate typo.


> it’s pretty frustrating to have a small group of users using years-old versions emailing in expecting bug fixes and support.

Why? The dev just says "the issue is fixed in the current release" or "we can only support current releases". Job done.


> I don't need bug reports unless you are also willing to fix the bug yourself in a pull request or by emailing a diff.

That sounds very condescending and off-putting.


>You can't complain about the existing system without offering an alternative.

Yes, you can, and yes, you should. Or are you saying you shouldn't file bug reports unless you can provide a patch?

Get real.


> why not see if you can implement the feature?

honestly I've offered multiple times to implement features/fix bugs. they never respond. that argument doesn't hold weight anymore when dealing with gnome.


> My point was that I just don't want to encounter bugs.

You purposefully installed a pre-release version in which they heavily mentioned there would be major bugs and other unfinished things in it.

I'm not sure what you expected here but unless you're talking about the release version I don't think you're being fair at all.


Client: "What do you mean it will cost X money and Y time to fix this trivial bug/feature in our App? And whats this babbling about having to upgrade at least a dozen frameworks? I just want this simple thing changed, not have my entire App rebuild. Last time you did that everything else broke and it took forever to get all the new bugs sorted."

> as a dev

I've had a number of devs, when receiving feedback, tell me that I should instead seek out their bug tracker, register with their feedback system, open a support ticket, give detailed instructions about how to identify and fix my problem, and then wait for a decision about how I'm wrong.

I've done that maybe twice.


> These are great, but they're bugfixes.

I agree with every you said but that first sentence. How are these bugs? They are features that never existed.


> Sonoma is pretty much just a bugfix release

There's no such thing as a major bugfix release. Every major update introduces more bugs than it fixes, and Sonoma is no exception to that hard rule. Which bugs were fixed? I've personally filed multiple new bugs against Sonoma.

I wrote about this in my previous comment: "It's not because of the .0 releases, which were very buggy like any .0 releases"


>By “pointing to bugs from several years ago” I definitely meant bugs that have already been fixed. Sorry.

Oh boy


The comment was in response to parent's stated complaint, namely having to wait for someone else to resolve issues with popular packages being broken after an update, which has been the experience of more than one user.

> broken development practices and the developers focusing on adding more features rather than working through the issues

Both of those problems are easily attributed to a lack of funding. Fulfilling feature requests generates money, fixing bugs does not. When you can only afford to spend 10 hours a week on a project, you're going to end up cutting corners to work around those time limits.


> The moment you allow bugs, you can't ensure backwards compatible changes.

I'm not sure what this even means, unless you're talking of the joke of "someone depended on the bug"?

A bug, by its very definition, means code that doesn't behave as the documented interface description states. Fixing bugs means correcting mistakes in the code so that now it does behave as documented. That's what patch releases do.


>Diagnostics is super simple stuff, [...]

Not at all. Bug hunting and finding what to fix wastes most of devs time.


> No, a bug in the release...was the bug.

So, there was a bug. A UX bug. Bugs aren’t software-exclusive.

I may be misunderstanding your point.

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