Jay Blanchard wrote: >> Whenever I've reported a core-dump (which I've stopped doing), >> nothing's been done about it unless I've been able to produce a short >> script to reproduce. >> [/snip] > > That is to be expected and is standard operating procedure for any > development team. I beg to differ. In the past 20 years, I've spent plenty of time working with core dumps, stand-alone dumps, slip traps and system traces debugging my own software (running at customer sites) without the remotest possibility of reproducing a problem on-demand. If you think a problem must be reproducable for "any development team" to solve it, you need to try working in a real one. No offence, just my opinion. > In order to replicate the issue they have to duplicate the action that > caused the failure. Unless you work based on trial&error, there is no real need to replicate the issue until you feel you may have identified the problem. A core dump or an strace or some debug output at the right time will have 99% of the information you need - provided you understand how to read it. I submit there is generally no need to reproduce a problem in order to diagnose it. To fix it, yes, it will undoubtedly help if you can reproduce it, but once you've diagnosed it, reproducing it is a lot easier. > You see that time and again on this list as well....without the > offending action all we can do is attempt to guess at what was going > on at the time of the failure. Diligent trouble-shooting on your part > would have gotten a much better response. You could have likely > isolated the code that caused the core dump (just as we isolate > problem code on this list... Jay, this is the same kind of c... that PHP developers have responded with in the past. I'm sorry, but IMO that is entirely unprofessional. OK, so maybe one isn't being paid to write open source software, but that's no excuse for not being professional about it. IMHO. What's the purpose of a core dump if it does not provide the key information for solving a problem? If I still have to isolate and reproduce the issue in user code, there seems to be very little need for the core dump, right? /Per Jessen, Zürich -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
