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Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

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Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#11

Post by twisteriffic »

amluto wrote: post #9

Once upon a time, you could buy various things from MS that came with support incidents. I had an MSDN subscription that came with two per year. Using an incident got you an actual support engineer who would be helpful and escalate issues if necessary. And, if your issue turned out to be a real bug of any significance in an MS product, your support incident would be credited back. This was great for developers (real…

That's Premier support, though now with a bunch of extra layers of contractors who can't do anything other than follow a script, capture traces and wait on the next level. In my experience it's been a time consuming waste of effort. I've had a lot better luck harvesting names and business cards from the teams at conferences and demo days, then going direct to the source.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#12

Post by sebazzz »

amluto wrote: post #9

Once upon a time, you could buy various things from MS that came with support incidents. I had an MSDN subscription that came with two per year. Using an incident got you an actual support engineer who would be helpful and escalate issues if necessary. And, if your issue turned out to be a real bug of any significance in an MS product, your support incident would be credited back. This was great for developers (real…

Generally as far as first line support goes, everything is outsourced to India. Cheaper, on paper.

Anectodically, I tried to get support for something unrelated: I’m trying to use IMAP sync support in Outlook.com, but it refuses to work properly with iCloud-IMAP but doesn’t give any error message either. As a paying M365 subscriber I expect proper support. I tried over five times to get support, and every time it ended in frustration. Every time I got someone who either doesn’t understand to product, says IMAP support is not available and deprecated (it is not! I was able to set-up a different IMAP provider just fine), or I got redirected to the Windows or Office support team, who then couldn’t help me and closed my ticket.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#13

Post by jansan »

masklinn wrote: post #10
1over137 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice to know that it's not just Apple to whom reporting bugs in hopeless. :)

I generally assume that's the case for any large company. Sometimes I get pleasantly surprised, but generally speaking the internal incentives are skewed against, the primary focus is whatever the roadmap is followed by tickets from paying clients, public bugs generally have a very low hit ratio so they're unrewarding, unless you manage to snipe one of the company's employees (either nerd-snipe or interest / shock th…

> I generally assume that's the case for any large company.

Despite Google partly losing its marbles recently, reporting bugs to Chromium still works very well.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#14

Post by Someone1234 »

sebazzz wrote: post #12
amluto wrote: post #9

Once upon a time, you could buy various things from MS that came with support incidents. I had an MSDN subscription that came with two per year. Using an incident got you an actual support engineer who would be helpful and escalate issues if necessary. And, if your issue turned out to be a real bug of any significance in an MS product, your support incident would be credited back. This was great for developers (real…

Generally as far as first line support goes, everything is outsourced to India. Cheaper, on paper. Anectodically, I tried to get support for something unrelated: I’m trying to use IMAP sync support in Outlook.com, but it refuses to work properly with iCloud-IMAP but doesn’t give any error message either. As a paying M365 subscriber I expect proper support. I tried over five times to get support, and every time it end…

Often times it just feels like they try to extend the ticket out as long as possible asking irrelevant questions, then as you said redirect you or close the ticket after wasting an appropriate amount of time.

I cannot prove it, but I bet there is an internal number of replies before they can close without penalty.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#15

Post by bee_rider »

jansan wrote: post #13
masklinn wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally assume that's the case for any large company. Sometimes I get pleasantly surprised, but generally speaking the internal incentives are skewed against, the primary focus is whatever the roadmap is followed by tickets from paying clients, public bugs generally have a very low hit ratio so they're unrewarding, unless you manage to snipe one of the company's employees (either nerd-snipe or interest / shock th…

> I generally assume that's the case for any large company. Despite Google partly losing its marbles recently, reporting bugs to Chromium still works very well.

I wonder if the open source element of the project keeps them “honest” to some extent?

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#16

Post by tgv »

1over137 wrote: post #7
mastax wrote: post #2

I understand why this is the case but it’s also extremely frustrating: > It is extremely difficult for programmer-users to report bugs against the Windows API (we're supposed to direct you to Feedback Hub, but you may as well transmit your message into deep space). I've filed OS-49268777 "SRWLOCK can deadlock after an exclusive owner has released ownership and several reader threads are attempting to acquire shared o…

Nice to know that it's not just Apple to whom reporting bugs in hopeless. :)

Depends on the team, I think. I've had no luck at all with the OS/framework and "core" apps bugs, except getting the report that it has been fixed, and I should install the new version of the OS. Only to find out the bug wasn't solved.

The Logic team, however, has been helpful, and in one or two cases (that were discussed in musician's forums) went out of their way.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#17

Post by rwmj »

sebazzz wrote: post #12
amluto wrote: post #9

Once upon a time, you could buy various things from MS that came with support incidents. I had an MSDN subscription that came with two per year. Using an incident got you an actual support engineer who would be helpful and escalate issues if necessary. And, if your issue turned out to be a real bug of any significance in an MS product, your support incident would be credited back. This was great for developers (real…

Generally as far as first line support goes, everything is outsourced to India. Cheaper, on paper. Anectodically, I tried to get support for something unrelated: I’m trying to use IMAP sync support in Outlook.com, but it refuses to work properly with iCloud-IMAP but doesn’t give any error message either. As a paying M365 subscriber I expect proper support. I tried over five times to get support, and every time it end…

If it's any consolation, our company pays for 20,000 GMail licenses and we seem unable to escalate any issue at all to Google, even major issues such as their clearly not working spam filtering, emails being lost, incorrect deduplication of emails, or their random IMAP throttling.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#18

Post by TillE »

mastax wrote: post #2

I understand why this is the case but it’s also extremely frustrating: > It is extremely difficult for programmer-users to report bugs against the Windows API (we're supposed to direct you to Feedback Hub, but you may as well transmit your message into deep space). I've filed OS-49268777 "SRWLOCK can deadlock after an exclusive owner has released ownership and several reader threads are attempting to acquire shared o…

Like the comment says, filing an issue on GitHub would've also eventually led to a proper internal report, so the system isn't wholly reliant on one guy trawling Reddit.

I have many complaints about Win32 (having half a dozen different error code types, for one), but outright bugs are really rare.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#19

Post by generic92034 »

masklinn wrote: post #10
1over137 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice to know that it's not just Apple to whom reporting bugs in hopeless. :)

I generally assume that's the case for any large company. Sometimes I get pleasantly surprised, but generally speaking the internal incentives are skewed against, the primary focus is whatever the roadmap is followed by tickets from paying clients, public bugs generally have a very low hit ratio so they're unrewarding, unless you manage to snipe one of the company's employees (either nerd-snipe or interest / shock th…

> I generally assume that's the case for any large company.

What works to some degree are dedicated maintenance teams providing development support. If their main task is fixing bugs and they are evaluated on this basis, support tickets reporting real bugs have a good chance to receive the required attention.

However, there is always the temptation for management to redirect resources from those teams. But at least in the B2B area costly customer escalations can remind management of the importance of good maintenance.

Re: Bug in reader/writer locks in Windows API

#20

Post by ddlsmurf »

adgjlsfhk1 wrote: post #5
mastax wrote: post #2

I understand why this is the case but it’s also extremely frustrating: > It is extremely difficult for programmer-users to report bugs against the Windows API (we're supposed to direct you to Feedback Hub, but you may as well transmit your message into deep space). I've filed OS-49268777 "SRWLOCK can deadlock after an exclusive owner has released ownership and several reader threads are attempting to acquire shared o…

The best way I know of to report bugs to windows is report them as documentation bugs. see for example https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/cpp-docs/pull/3526 .

It looks like it was declared in Nov 21, and in May 23 they merged in the "fix" by adding "it's approximate" to the docs ( https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/cpp-docs/commit/447b5d8a781... ), so not sure this is the best approach for actual bugs.
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