[support] Best way to fix a bug?

[Greg Knaddison - GVS]

On 9/12/07, Jim Smith <jsmith at wate.com> wrote:
> I know I was being vague. I was trying to ask the question in general
> terms so that I would know how to handle all bugs, rather than the
> specific one I'm dealing with now. Though I'd love to have help on the
> specific bug I'm dealing with, I know that only a few people might have
> knowledge about the module that has the bug. However, many people deal
> with debugging scripts everyday, and that's why I was looking for some
> strategies to best track down and fix bugs.

I think that's a great question and respect you for asking it.

I wrote this handbook page over a year ago: http://drupal.org/node/73179
HOWTO: Make A GOOD issue report

I'd say that your issue report lacks a good title, and (more
importantly) simple steps to repeat the issue.

Reading your issue I imagine it would take me a few hours to repeat
the bug.  Then once I repeated it fixing it might take 10 minutes.
This seems like a bad ratio

I suggest that you create a test Drupal installation on a development
server (or your local desktop) and then take as few steps as possible
until the problem happens again.  Then do it again with slightly
different settings until you can isolate the exact conditions that
cause it.  Record those steps in the issue starting with "Install
Drupal" and ending with "Condition X happens and I'd like it to be
condition Y".

Once you've done that it will be easy (or easier) to fix the problem
and the module maintainer will be more likely to fix the problem.

Another potentially useful document (after you've improved the issue
itself) is the page on "Getting a Bug Fixed Sooner"
http://drupal.org/node/73178

Regards,
Greg

PS Did you reapply the patch after upgrading to drupal5?

-- 
Greg Knaddison
Denver, CO | http://knaddison.com
World Spanish Tour | http://wanderlusting.org/user/greg