[V3.3.2] Reproduceable squelch crash.

[David Vestal]

The game can be crashed under Windows as follows:
1) Open the squelch options, and choose any category.
2) Click anything with the mouse.
3) Crash!

For what it's worth, I have mouse interaction disabled in as many options as I can find.

For what it's worth 2.0, while I think Angband has been impeccably maintained in recent years, the bug reporting guidelines on rephial.org seem dissuadingly onerous.

[Magnate]

The game can be crashed under Windows as follows:
1) Open the squelch options, and choose any category.
2) Click anything with the mouse.
3) Crash!

For what it's worth, I have mouse interaction disabled in as many options as I can find.

For what it's worth 2.0, while I think Angband has been impeccably maintained in recent years, the bug reporting guidelines on rephial.org seem dissuadingly onerous.

Thanks for the report. Can anybody reproduce this in 3.4.0-RC1? There's been a lot of mouse support work since 3.3.2 so hopefully it's gone away ...

David - could you link to the onerous guidelines? I suspect I'm responsible, so very happy to have feedback on how to make them less onerous. (We haven't had noticeable problems with people reporting bugs, but that's not a reason not to improve the guidance.)

[fizzix]

Reproduced this. Created #1657. I would say that this is a pretty high priority bug to fix. I'm amazed it's taken so long to discover! Good find!

[David Vestal]

David - could you link to the onerous guidelines? I suspect I'm responsible, so very happy to have feedback on how to make them less onerous. (We haven't had noticeable problems with people reporting bugs, but that's not a reason not to improve the guidance.)

I'll just explain what I mean, while prefacing again with compliments on the way the game has been maintained itself. I don't mean to come across as being too negative. But here was a general story of my bug submission thought process.

1. See bug. Play with the game until I can reproduce it (I originally thought it was related to switching windows, since I had initially caused it by switching from another app back to Angband with a click). Head to rephial.org, find the Issue Tracker at http://trac.rephial.org/. No prob.
2. See "please read both the TicketCreation guide and the KeywordGuide first". Okay, no biggie. Read all about which keywords to use, and how to report, etc.
3. See that before I create a ticket, I should post a thread on the forum asking if anyone else has seen this. Satisfy myself with glancing through the top few pages to note that no one else is posting about it.
4. Notice that before continuing further, I'm to check one or more of 4 different bug lists to avoid duplication. At this point it starts to get silly for me. I've done enough development to know that what I saw was a bug that I can explain well enough to reproduce in 20 words or less, and it doesn't really affect my quality of gameplay. I'm not invested, I'm just trying to pass off info that game maintainers may find useful. But still, I check a few of those lists. I don't find a duplicate.
5. Glance around for a "submit ticket" link. I haven't used Trac before, so I'm not so familiar with it. Look at all the links at the bottom of the "development tracker" page. Realize that none of them are a link to a ticket submission form. Reread the "TicketCreation" guide. Fail to find a link to a ticket submission form.
6. Give up, post the bug in the forum, and call it done.

I guess it seems like a lot of hurdles in a situation where I know beyond doubt that it's a bug, probably a simple one, and I'm just trying to quickly proffer the info and get back to playing the game itself. If you disagree, no biggie; it's one-time feedback and I won't belabor the point.

[fizzix]

6. Give up, post the bug in the forum, and call it done.

Honestly, I think posting the bug in the forum should be the first step. I check the forums pretty often and will try to reproduce any bug that gets put here. Besides, I feel like external reproducibility is good before a bug gets put to trac. By now, I have a reasonable handle on all the open tickets and know what's a new bug and what's an outstanding issue, but I don't expect even the most diehard player to have that knowledge. I certainly didn't until I started going through the ticket list for 3.4. I think it's silly to expect players to search through the ticket lists to verify that what they've seen is a new bug.

Probably we should recommend that people post a description of the bug in the forum first. And if they *really* want to open a ticket on trac, then they should follow those directions.

Speaking of the bug. d_m was able to traceback to the error, and we should have a bugfix up for it shortly. I'm sorry this was such a hassle for you, but I'm grateful that you've found the bug and reported it here!

[Magnate]

Honestly, I think posting the bug in the forum should be the first step. I check the forums pretty often and will try to reproduce any bug that gets put here. Besides, I feel like external reproducibility is good before a bug gets put to trac. By now, I have a reasonable handle on all the open tickets and know what's a new bug and what's an outstanding issue, but I don't expect even the most diehard player to have that knowledge. I certainly didn't until I started going through the ticket list for 3.4. I think it's silly to expect players to search through the ticket lists to verify that what they've seen is a new bug.

Probably we should recommend that people post a description of the bug in the forum first. And if they *really* want to open a ticket on trac, then they should follow those directions.

Er, both the TicketCreation guide and the "How To Report A Bug" FAQ state that one should start a forum thread before opening a ticket. The trac guidelines go further and say, precisely as you would wish, that the bug should be corroborated and reproducible before opening one. I don't think you are suggesting anything that isn't already recommended.

The bit about checking for duplicates is purely to avoid duplicate tickets on trac - though it is also helpful if people check threads here for similar issues before creating a new one, as David did.

@David: many thanks for the feedback - I think there are two things that can be improved. One is the "one of four different lists" problem - there are many ways to check for a duplicate bug on trac, so I'll try to be more specific about the outcome and let people do it however they prefer (there is already a link to the full list of tickets, but that is quite tedious to scan). The second is the absence of the "new ticket" link - it hadn't occurred to me that a guest reading the guidance but not logged into trac would be unable to see it, so thanks for pointing that out - I'll make a note that people will need to register to create one.

[PowerWyrm]

Fix available: http://trac.rephial.org/ticket/1657