> What about a bug day? If everyone could put aside a saturday
> we could concentrate our efforts and get some extra work done.

Sounds okay, but from my perspective I don't understand why those with coding skills don't peck away at the bug report list on their own. Why wait? Does everybody here expect Tim to do all of the work?

I own my own house. I perform almost all maintenance around here myself. Likewise with my vehicles. Why? Yes, because I can, but mostly because of a sense of ownership. When I don't perform the maintenance then nothing gets done. Is there no sense of ownership with Trinity team members?

I am learning C++ but I have sufficient programming background. With many of the bug reports I review and file myself I can sense what needs to be done but I am not yet skilled with C++ syntax to start hacking. My thoughts are that those with C++ skills should be able to hack at only two or three bugs reports per week and we would see significant progress.

Sure, some of the bugs require comprehensive knowledge about how the various TDE components interact. Yet many bugs do not. For example, the first bug report I filed almost two years ago remains open:

230 Amarok Keyboard Shortcuts Do Not Work Correctly.

Or a usability bug that irritates me deeply:

392 Desktop Device Icon Placement 

Or a more recent report not filed by me:

560 akregator no longer displays icons next to feed titles or url destinations in status bar.

Then there are many bug reports related to make and configure issues and require no C++ skills. For example:

788 Kdemultimedia: Kaudiocreator won't build unless configure finds the cdda headers
790 kdemultimedia: audiofile.h configure errors
872 tdesdk FTBFS Against TQt3
873 Gwenview will not build libmng support

These examples all are classic "paper cut" candidates.

I don't have crack C++ skills but I submit patches because of --- persistence. I now can read C++ barely well enough to follow the logic and that allows me to propose a patch or at least update the bug report with the root cause.

That in itself would be a lot of help: for those who can read the code and understand the basic logic. Find the cause and then propose how to resolve the bug report. That saves time for C++ coders.

If I can do that then how much more for those with superior C++ skills?

I have a habit for filing bug reports to start the tracking process and then several days later I'll start uploading patches. That is, I try hard to be actively involved in my bug reports and not sit around expecting others to do all of the work.

By getting involved my C++ skills slowly improve. Slowly, but they do improve. If I waited all the time then those skills would not improve.

By getting involved my understanding about automake and cmake have improved.

I'm not talking hot air. Query the bugzilla: when I am able to submit a patch I do.

Why am I involved? Because I want Trinity to succeed. I want to use Trinity as my desktop environment. I am not thrilled by the other desktop choices available to me. Seeing Trinity succeed is important to me.

All I am saying is there are different levels of helping resolve bug reports. A "bug day" sounds fine but does not explain why people don't jump in and get involved right now.

Yes, there are time constraints. We all have them to one degree or another. Just pick one bug report and start working. Just one bug report. If five people picked one bug report per week then we would see five bug reports resolved per week. Even at that pace users will notice an active community. Multiply that by two bug reports per week and realize the trend. Right now all anybody notices is nothing happening and that is disturbing and discouraging.

I'll add more observation. Typically I post problems to this list before filing a bug report. Overwhelmingly I receive no response at all. In other words I have almost no choice but to file the bug report. This list is where developers (and packagers) meet. We should be trying to help one another. Many problems are solved with a little nudge here or there. Flat dead silence is not a good indicator of community health. I'm not sure what to conclude by this repeated silence.

Must be Monday. I'll remove my halo and get off my soap box now.

Darrell