Documentation on submitting bugs for newcomers (was Re: bug in schemaparse.c (fwd))

["W. Bradley Rubenstein" <rubenb@jany.gs.com>]

Hallvard B Furuseth wrote:
> ...  Could you tell us what made you
> steer away from the "correct channels" (openldap-bug@openldap.org or ITS
> at <URL:http://www.openldap.org/its/>), so we can fix the text so other
> newcomers will feel free to report bugs there?

Sure.  Problem is for users who want to report a bug in order to be
helpful, but do not want to otherwise participate in the development
process.  Since I'm only new at this once (:-)), I'll note my steps:

My first stop was to search for "bugs" and "bug reporting" in the
Faq-o-matic, hoping to see an entry on how to report bugs, but I didn't
see one.  ** Perhaps that's the only thing to fix. **  However, I
suspect it's important enough to include a "Reporting Bugs" link on the
home page. 

I went to the ITS page, and its first three sentences are:
"You have entered the system as a guest user.
You will not be able to modify anything or access non-guest features.
For assistance using this system, see the ITS help pages."

My initial reaction was that this was a system for developers to track
and discuss design issues amongst themselves, since (a) the word "bug"
is conspicuously absent and (b) it takes pains to warn me that I won't
be able to touch anything (because I might break it).  I'm directed to
the ITS help pages, but they are a detailed design document, not a list
of the five things Joe User with a bug should do.

Finally, since I had a buggy line of code in hand, and a patch that
fixed it fine (though it was expedient rather than "right", as opposed
to Kurt's fix, which holds the moral high ground), and (using cvsweb), I
could see how the line of code got there, I figured the best thing was
just to ask the developer what his intentions were.

And now I know! 

Brad