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Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

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Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#171

Post by eminence32 »

youarentrightjr wrote: post #116
eminence32 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think that there is no harm in keeping the bug open. I think if you honestly feel that you have the time and resources to go back to the bug and fix it, then by all means keep it open. But I find that sometimes I can tell from experience that the IR is not actionable and that it will never be fixed. Some examples: * There's not enough info to reproduce the issue and the user either can't or won't be able to…

I think asking someone if they can still reproduce an issue is valid. Especially if it was trivially reproducible for them, and now it isn't, that seems like a fine resolution, and the bug should be closed. But in the other cases, closing the bug seems to me to be a way to perturb metrics. It might be true that you'll never fix a given bug, but shouldn't there be a record of the "known defects", or "errata" as some c…

> It might be true that you'll never fix a given bug, but shouldn't there be a record of the "known defects", or "errata" as some call them?

Yes, fully agreed. But closing a bug doesn't preclude that. A closed bug isn't refutation or denial of a defect. It's just an indication that there is no plan to fix the bug. Not every bug system works like this though. My bug tracker works like this, and I should have more clearly described what a "closed bug" is in my earlier posts.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#172

Post by what »

tchalla wrote: post #142
bmitc wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Anthropic's repo. They auto-close issues after just a few weeks. I don't think I've seen an issue of theirs that wasn't auto-closed.

Wait, isn’t software engineering a solved problem?

Yes, that’s why they have such great up time. They don’t go down multiple times per day.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#173

Post by godelski »

nradov wrote: post #102
beembeem wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. On the other side of the curtain this often isn't nefarious. It's a simple cost/benefit analysis of spending time on something that one user is complaining about versus a backlog of higher business priorities. I've seen this in my work and it makes me sad for the user, but it often does take a bit of effort to spear these bug reports through.

I totally understand that from the perspective of individual employees: they have little incentive to do more than the bare minimum to close tickets. But this behavior is typically a symptom of broken corporate culture and failure to align internal metrics. For every customer who takes the trouble to submit a formal bug report there are likely many others who just live with it, and badmouth you to other customers. Do…

  > For every customer who takes the trouble to submit a formal bug report there are likely many others who just live with it
This reminds me of a fairly old but famous story about ignoring bugs from Linux users. I couldn't find the HN post but here's slashdot

  | Though only 5.8% of his game's buyers were playing on Linux, they generated over 38% of the bug reports. Not because the Linux platform was buggier, either. Only 3 of the roughly 400 bug reports submitted by Linux users were platform specific
The short is that they initially ignored it, triaging, but it was a mistake. Especially since the culture of Linux users is to submit more detailed bug reports. That their submissions help general users.

Don't just a bug report by its cover, judge it by its merits. We're all biased to dismiss them and find an excuse to ignore them. But that just leads to bad software.

https://m.slashdot.org/story/391921

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#174

Post by nradov »

eob wrote: post #163
rkagerer wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of attitude disgusts me. Like it's someone else's job to have a sense of accountability. They would not remain employed in my company. When I developed software I would jump right on top of any bug reports immediately, and work until they were fixed. I was grateful to my customers for bringing them to my attention.

My guess it's just the emergent behavior that results when a company doesn't provide developers time to fix bugs. If their week is already booked full just trying to keep up with the roadmap deadlines, a bug ticket feels like being tossed a 25lb weight when you're drowning. You could say: "but have pride in your work!" But if your company only values shipping, not fixing, that attitude doesn't make it through the fir…

What I've found to be most effective for program management is to set aside a maintenance team separate from the feature teams. The roadmap is then planned without counting anything for the maintenance team and they deal with bug tickets as they come in. Rotate the assignment periodically so that every developer has to occasionally spend a few months on the maintenance team.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#175

Post by cedws »

afdbcreid wrote: post #109
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. Or with open source projects. Fucking stalebot.

As an open source maintainer, I feel that statement is really unfair. Yes, we do sometimes close bug reports without evidence they are fixed. But: - We owe you nothing! And the fact that people still expect maintainers to work for them is really sad, IMHO. - Unlike corporate workers, nobody is measuring our productivity therefore we have no incentive to close issues if we believe they are unfixed. That means that whe…

It's not about expectation of work (well, there's some entitled people sure.)

It's about throwing away the effort the reporter put into filing the issue. Stale bots disincentivise good quality issues, makes them less discoverable, and creates the burden of having to collate discussion across N previously raised issues about the same thing.

Bug reports and FRs are also a form of work. They might have a selfish motive, but they're still raised with the intention of enriching the software in some way.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#176

Post by dbetteridge »

themafia wrote: post #8

> FB22057274 “Pinned tabs: slow-loading target="_blank" links appear in the wrong tab If you're not testing your code under extreme latency it will almost certainly fail in all kinds of hilarious ways. I spend a lot of time with 4G as my only internet connection. It makes me feel that most software is quickly produced, poorly tested, and thrown out the door on a whim.

That would be an accurate summary of almost all software.

Either it's quickly produced and thrown out the door as it's a startup trying to iterate and find market fit asap or because it's a bigcorp who's metrics are all not related to software.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#177

Post by nradov »

BrenBarn wrote: post #122

All kinds of open source projects do this too. It's really annoying. It's one thing if the authors actually try and fail to verify the bug, but these days it seems like most projects just close "stale" bugs as a matter of course. This is equivalent to assuming that any given bug is automatically fixed after X amount of time, which is pretty absurd.

It's rather unreasonable to be annoyed. The maintainers may have entirely different priorities, which is fine. They're also likely being spammed with low-effort bug reports (not yours necessarily but from others).

The great thing about open source projects you can just fix the bug yourself and submit a PR, or fork the whole project if the maintainers won't merge your changes. If you don't have the time or skills yourself then you can even pay a contractor to do it for you.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#178

Post by nradov »

eminence32 wrote: post #26
hart_russell wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company like Apple should have complex enough tools to perfectly capture system state at the time of the bug so that they can reproduce it

I don't work at Apple, so I can't comment on that. But that doesn't always help. There's been plenty of times where I have a full HAR file from the user and I can clearly see that something went wrong, but that doesn't always mean I can reproduce the issue. (I recognize a HAR file doesn't represent the complete state of the world, but it's often one of the best things a backend developer can get)

It always helps. Even if you can't determine the root cause you can at least add an extra assertion check or logging statement at that point so that next time the bug gets triggered you'll at least get more useful diagnostic data and can get a step close. Iterate until you find the root cause.

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#179

Post by fendy3002 »

MiddleEndian wrote: post #129
masklinn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. Or with open source projects. Fucking stalebot.

Or even non-software tickets at large corporations. I reported a water dispenser filling too slowly at my office because it took me a few tries just to fill my 1L water bottle. They said it was fixed and closed it. It was not fixed. So I took a video of myself refilling my water bottle, attached it to the ticket, and re-opened it. They actually fixed it after that. The video was 2m12s long (and I spent god knows how…

this is actually a good example of how a more detailed issue will have a higher chance to be addressed. I don't know what information that's your previous report is lacking, but the video certainly give more information that the maintainer can pinpoint the cause and act on it. The ability to pinpoint the cause from the report is a godsent for maintainers, it drastically reduce the time to investigate the cause, thus able to act immediately.

Some of the information in this can may be:

* how "slow" exactly the process is related with normal behavior. If it's just said "slow" on previous report, it's easy to be dismissed

* the dispenser's behavior, such as if the water flow is consistently low volume or clogged intermittently, or if the dispenser is struggling to fetch from water source, etc

Re: Apple randomly closes bug reports unless you "verify" the bug remains unfixed

#180

Post by tonetheman »

freediddy wrote: post #23

Author must not have worked in enterprise software before. That's a classic trick where the developer will push back on the bug author and say "I can't reproduce this, can you verify it with the latest version?" without actually doing anything. And if it doesn't get confirmed then they can close it as User Error or Not Reproducible. Of course, the only way to counter this is by saying "Yes I verified it" without actu…

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