[Ardour-Users] Struggling to do anything at all

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 2 August 2007 at 16:28, Steven Chamberlain <steven at pyro.eu.org> wrote:

> Paul Davis wrote:
> > ardour is a huge program with many, many different
> > possible workflows. clearly, the core developers cannot test every
> > possible workflow
> 
> Just a thought, but perhaps an automated framework for testing is the
> best way to tackle that.

About 25 years ago I worked in a group that wrote embedded
real-time code for a piece of gear that had two software
interfaces, each through a different kind of port, as well as
a hardware interface with buttons, etc.  Lots of folks were
using their alpha code in our alpha hardware (I worked in the
hardware half of the group) and occasionally the gear would lock
up.  That made the software folks quite frustrated since they
could almost never get enough info to even attempt to repeat
the sequence of events that lead up to the lock up.  Eventually
someone in the software group created a program that would spew
sequences of individually legal events at the various interfaces
while recording those events.  The sequence of events was often
nonsensical, but each even was legal.  They found and squashed a
ton of bugs using this tool.  In fact, it was so successful, that
it became part of the Q/A process.  I think a Q/A pass might have
been running this stress test 24/7 for two weeks with no lock
ups.

I know how hard it is to debug something that's not fully
described.  It's even worse when one's own system has to be
different than the one where a symptom showed up.  Hang in there
developers!

As for us users, really good bug reports are just essential for
improving the quality of any code you use.  We are really lucky
that ardour (and other OSS) developers actually look at and
fix the bugs.  Why do you think GNU/Linux and OSS software got
as good as it did as quickly as it did?  Part of it was good,
widespread, development.  Part of it certainly was a patient and
constructively vocal user base.  OK, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Cheers...

--
Kevin