Subject: Re: [1.3.3] breaks serial i/o?
From: "Robert Collins" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>, <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 11:12:53 +1000

William (or do you prefer Bill as another poster referred to you by?)
I'll use William in the lack of better knowledge :].

Also, sorry for the missive length reply, but I figured that brevity
would not necessarily serve, I was brief before and that apparently
caused a defensive reaction, so I'll be verbose, and probably also
generate a defensive reaction, but *maybe* you'll understand *why* I
critiqued what I did.

Lastly, I'm not sure that this really belongs on gdb as well as cygwin,
but hey :}

----- Original Message -----
From: "William A. Gatliff" <[email-masked]>
To: "Robert Collins" <[email-masked]>
Cc: <[email-masked]>; <[email-masked]>
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2001 6:08 AM
Subject: Re: [1.3.3] breaks serial i/o?

> Robert:
>
...
> all here the show is over.  Move along, nothing more to see.  It's a
> dead parrot, Jim.  I've got his tricorder, Christopher took his
wallet.

Is there such a thing as sol? That is snigger out loud?. Well I did.
Nice one.

> Christopher and I have already made nice, both in public *and*
> private.  And we all get along just fine, now, thanks.  In fact, we're
> both working closely to see what we can learn about this damned
> repeatable problem on my setup.

I can see. That's why I didn't jump in the main discussion. The reason
my response was so late was that I was reading three days worth of email
in one hit. I get a significant amount of mail, so that was a bit
taxing. It - is of course - my problem. However of all the responses,
only one stood out as moving from informative to abusive. I chose to
respond to that email, as I thought and still think it had it's fact's
wrong and a somewhat malicious intent.

> > You might like to read Eric S Raymonds essay on getting help from
> > open source groups.
>
> Perhaps, but you may also like to hear why I posted the messaage I
> did.  Grant was right--- I was fully aware of what I was writing.  It
> wasn't a perfect posting, but if I had to do it all over again I
> probably wouldn't change much.

I wouldn't ask you to change much. You got a sane response to a fairly
clear question. Changing the way you ask questions is something you will
choose or not choose to do. It's not my business to suggest that you
change.

> I've been working with GNU stuff for ten years now, and I've learned
> the hard way many times that I'm almost *never* the first person to
> spot a bug, especially something that seems so obvious as what I'm
> grappling with right now.  I'm getting more sophisticated in my use
> and adaptation of GNU stuff, though, so I'm seeing new stuff
> occasionally, but it's still the exception rather than the rule.

Like you, I've been using GNU and related stuff for a little over ten
years, and I'm consistently surprised by how robust and bug the 'thing'
is. I rarely find existing bugs in any project. Mind you I have one of
those 'oops did I push the limits?' knacks. Anyway, I treat every
potential bug as a potential bug, research it (as you did, via the
web/archives etc), and then - depending on the project - log a bug in a
bug database, check the source, or ask on a mailing list. From your
emails I presume you do much the same. All this paragraph is intended to
convey is that I do not have an issue with *your* behaviour. Some parts
(when you had a bad day ?) weren't optimal for achieving your stated
goals, but that is your issue, not mine.

> So I provided an open-ended question, in hopes that someone else had
> already traveled the road I'm headed down, and already knows something
> useful that I can build upon.  Failing that, I am more than happy to
> roll up my sleeves and dig in, in hopes that (a) I'll find the
> solution, and (b), I'll save someone else the trouble later on.  My
> sleeves are rolled up as we speak, in fact.

Good!.

>
....
>
> So I posted a delibrately open-ended question, along the lines of, "Is
> anyone else having problems with serial i/o and just not mentioning
> it?  Is it known to be broken, or am I seeing something new here?"  At
> the time, I didn't want or need any more detail than that.  The
> response I got was just Christopher having a bad day, and my followup
> was my having a bad day (which wasn't Christopher's fault btw).

I don't recall that email. The question I saw
(http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-10/msg01064.html) read
"Suggestions, patches, signs of moral support, etc. would all be most
graciously accepted." In the rest of the email (to avoid out-of-context
issues) there is no request about what other folks experience is or
whether your issue is new. Most (all?) of the statements made about the
bug you experience where made as generalised statements about cygwin
1.3.2 and 1.3.3.

As far as open ended questions go, to save you a little time, here is a
quote from the ESR essay I reference...

"Be explicit about the question you have
Open-ended questions tend to be perceived as open-ended time sinks. The
people most likely to be able to give you a useful answer are also the
busiest people (if only because they take on the most work themselves).
People like that are allergic to open-ended time sinks, thus they tend
to be allergic to open-ended questions.

You are more likely to get a useful response if you are explicit about
what you want respondents to do (provide pointers, send code, check your
patch, whatever). This will focus their effort and implicitly put an
upper bound on the time and energy a respondent has to put in to helping
you. This is good."

Now, looking at your question...
Patches require a known bug. You provided 0 details of the symptoms. Did
gdb hang? Did it crash? Did it send any traffic at all?
Suggestions - as to what I'm not clear.. you mention patching gcc & gdb
to build as well as your serial issue. I'd assume you mean as to the
likely hood of finding your serial fault and fixing it before the
article goes live... which is what Chris email told you the first steps
to doing (among his bad day wrappings )?
And moral support is I presume a throwaway humourous line :].

I considered actually analyzing your inital report and then the extra
info revealed during later discussions - stuff you did know and could
have included - like the fact you'd done a literature search. That sort
of effort makes a big difference in perception. However my intent here
is not to escalate an issue that as you point out has been laid to rest.
Point made.

> to work fine."  THIS WAS ALL THE DETAIL I WAS AFTER AT THE TIME.

Good. William - I'll reiterate. I had no 'issue' with your behaviour.
You and Chris were both striking sparks, but that was about all. Who
cares! If you got what you want, great.

> Grant can verify that I'm fully capable of providing any level of
> detail on this that you guys want to see.

I'll take your word for it. You are working with Chris on the problem,
'nuff said.

> But in the meantime, I also have to do damage control on the article
> I'm working on.  I didn't need a detailed response to know what kind
> of band-aid to apply to the manuscript, so I didn't spend much time
> gathering details before writing the post.  I should have made that
> clearer, but I didn't and some of you apparently have some problems
> with that.

To be clear:

"The reason I responded at all, and in the response critiqued the
original post was simply because Grant asserted that there was nothing
wrong with 'that', and that all you where doing was repoting a bug."

In fact Grant was wrong - you were reporting a bug *under a time
constraint*. That means that time is of the essence for you. Again,
'nuff said.

> > That's like saying "I have a problem with pthreads on linux kernel
> > foo, help." and expecting a useful reply. Ha!
>
> Your example is a substantially different question, at least if that's
> the only detail the poster provides.  Re-read my original posting, and
> I think you'll see what I mean.

I have done so. Let me rephrase myself (not intending parody).
"I recently upgraded my i686 linux kernel from 2.4.5 to 2.4.6 and now I
have a problem with pthreads and gdb. I've been trying for several days
but they don't work. I've got an Alpha and a RISC machine floating
around that I can test on if necessary... Suggestions, patches, signs of
moral support etc..."

> I don't know what Eric Raymond's essay says (can't find a URL,
> actually), but keep in mind that the definition of "useful reply"

http://tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

> varies widely.  Read between the lines of any posting, try to match
> the poster's intent in your response, and educate them on what they
> need to do next in order to fully engage your services.

Hmm, in short, place the onus for *helping you* on *me*? (Or on the
person who actually answered.. Chris in this case.)

Does anything seem a little wrong there? I'll leave you to think about
what payment the respondent gets for his/her services in a volunteer
group and then we can discuss where the onus should be placed.

> Now, let's move on now, ok?

Done. Forgotten. Next thread needed.

Rob

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