How to get ORCA/C bugs fixed.

[toddpw@avarice.ugcs.caltech.edu (Todd P. Whitesel)]

Actually it is very simple:

	1. isolate an ACTUAL SOURCE FILE that is small and triggers the bug.
	2. email this source file and a description of what is wrong to Mike.
	3. wait. (how long is debatable, however)

If you are not willing to do this much, stop griping about how buggy ORCA/C
is. Compiler bugs are very hard to track down without self-contained test
cases that are known to cause the bug. Just telling Mike in a couple
sentences is not enough for most problems, because the real bug may depend
on other things in your program that don't look like they make a difference,
but actually do.

Mike keeps telling us on GEnie that he has to throw many bug reports in the
trash because people send him nebulous descriptions that don't do anything
weird when he tries making a program out of them, so he's given up on trying
to reproduce those bugs because it takes forever. With a real test case he
can watch the bug happen with all his debug code enabled and track it down.

At work I have dealt with enough lousy bug reports to know how true this all
is. If I cannot trivially get the bug to happen and there is no actual source
file to cause the bug, it isn't worth my time. In fact our customer support
staff makes it a general policy to give dog priority to lame bug reports and
usually sends them back with a request for a real test case.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ ugcs.caltech.edu