Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 10:56 UTC (Mon) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375)
In reply to: Systemd catches up with bind events by NYKevin
Parent article: Systemd catches up with bind events

>That is not trolling, that is an entirely fair response to "you don't see it because you don't have the right hardware."
Many years of past experience have given this a name: 'works for me'. Developer doesn't experience the problem and can't conceive of the imagined version of the code in their head not running as they think it will.

This is dull, unhelpful pushback -- what would be better if not actually helpful is to call no-op ACTION=="remove", GOTO='end_stanza' an antipattern making you think that add/change/remove are the only legitimate udev action types and core to this 4.12-changed-userspace issue.

(There's a further issue at the level of our civilisation and society where 'works for me' gives people with power -- to fix bugs raised by users -- a habit of denying the lived experience of users and the struggles that users have with our software, which can become a life-long denial of the lived experience and struggle of other human people. I get that, in software, unanticipated complexity means that fixes have to not also break other things and that makes an apparently-simple change expensive and unpredictable, easier to push back and not make changes. Here's the question from this rhetoric: Are we not the wizards and masters of these systems that we should be able to change them to work more correctly for more people?)

K3n.

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Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 12:15 UTC (Mon) by magfr (subscriber, #16052) [Link]

This is interesting and further enforces my half formed thought that matching of inverse patterns are bad since it assumed that the set of values är fixed and unchanged.

The example in the article was matching
~add|change when what is needed is remove.

For this poster the problem sounds like the reverse, he needs to match ~add|change and someone have "optimzed" that to remove.

This proves that one need to know what one is doing and that crap can be written in any language, in this case the udev config rule language.

One way to fix this is to document an ERROR event.
Any rule that mentions an ERROR event is broken.
Any action that happens when ERROR is issued is a bug.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 12:21 UTC (Mon) by hkario (subscriber, #94864) [Link] (8 responses)

put yourself in the developers boots for a minute:

you get a bug report, you look at the experienced behaviour, you haven't encountered it before; you try it with your hardware, it's not reproducible; you look at code that *may* be related, it doesn't seem possible to trigger this kind of behaviour

now, what on earth can you do more than to ask for more information?

Developers aren't omniscient and omnipotent entities that exist beyond confines of space and time, entities that fix bugs based only on a fickle. They're human, and they need to understand the bug before they can fix it.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 17:59 UTC (Mon) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (7 responses)

You create a unit/regression test which mocks hardware to behave the way described by the bug reporter? Consult the spec to confirm that this is a valid use case? Just saying "works for me" is being a horrible maintainer.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 18:30 UTC (Mon) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

> Just saying "works for me" is being a horrible maintainer.

That wasn't what was said however. There was a question back on what makes the hardware different which seems to have gone unanswered. Given the wide variations in hardware, this is a reasonable question.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 20, 2020 15:16 UTC (Fri) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (5 responses)

>> Just saying "works for me" is being a horrible maintainer.

>That wasn't what was said however.

It wasn't *exactly* what was said but it was the spirit of what was said.

K3n.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 20, 2020 15:45 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

> It wasn't *exactly* what was said but it was the spirit of what was said.

I don't agree but even assuming that, works for me is a fine thing to say if you don't stop at that point. There was a query for more information. It's up to the reporter to pursue that further

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 20, 2020 20:08 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (3 responses)

The key is to coax out the difference in the setup from the reporter. I find it hard to get relevant details from reporters sometimes. I know what I'm looking for, but reporters will sometimes trim output to what they think is important, missing the actual details that are relevant to diagnosing the problem. Screenshots instead of copy/pasted text are also a thing.

It's about communication. I certainly have more to learn on this front, but part of it is realizing the differences in knowledge and expectations on either side of the wire.

Systemd catches up with bind events - works for me

Posted Nov 21, 2020 19:14 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

This thread is either about someone's serious misinterpretation of the "works for me" response as, "this is your problem; go away" or a misnaming of that actual response.

"Works for me" is a request for more information or diagnostic work.

But I've also been the recipient of the response, "What you're doing is too unusual for me to care about. Do what I do, and it will work." Many times. I'm creative. I suppose someone might characterize that as "works for me."

Systemd catches up with bind events - works for me

Posted Nov 28, 2020 9:21 UTC (Sat) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (1 responses)

I guess there's a subtle difference between "works for me" and "can't reproduce". I, as the bug report responder, would never say the former as it souds kind of dismissive. Like in, "i reproduced your exact environment and it works for me". The latter admits that you're probably missing some context that makes the reproduction impossible.

But other people will feel differently about this.

Systemd catches up with bind events - works for me

Posted Nov 28, 2020 19:29 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

How you say things can be so important ...

"Can't reproduce" implies you have tried to replicate the error, you've put in a bit of effort to help the person with the problem.

"Works for me", on the other hand, *could* mean the same thing. It could also mean "I don't suffer that problem, so I can't be bothered to look for it".

And then there's the language problem. I'm probably known for being a bit prickly about language and how, even when you may think you're speaking the "same" language, the identical word may mean different things based on the speaker's background.

Cheers,
Wol

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 16, 2020 21:14 UTC (Mon) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (4 responses)

> There's a further issue at the level of our civilisation and society where 'works for me' gives people with power -- to fix bugs raised by users -- a habit of denying the lived experience of users and the struggles that users have with our software, which can become a life-long denial of the lived experience and struggle of other human people.

Poe's law works both ways: one is never sure whether someone is sarcastic or sincere on the internet.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 18, 2020 14:37 UTC (Wed) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (3 responses)

>>> There's a further issue at the level of our civilisation and society where 'works for me' gives people with power -- to fix bugs raised by users -- a habit of denying the lived experience of users and the struggles that users have with our software, which can become a life-long denial of the lived experience and struggle of other human people.

>Poe's law works both ways: one is never sure whether someone is sarcastic or sincere on the internet.

You have to live your life, I can't make this statement a positive for you if you've taken it on bad faith. Plus, I hope that you can overcome whatever made it difficult to trust words from a random internet person. Maybe the world also needs to change to allow you this.

Life's going to miserable for everyone if we presume bad faith.

K3n.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 18, 2020 19:32 UTC (Wed) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link] (2 responses)

> Life's going to miserable for everyone if we presume bad faith.

The point here is that the statement I quoted is entirely over the top but it's still impossible to be sure whether it was made sincerely or not.

Look: developers that say 'works for me' are simply stating a mundane fact. If things didn't work for them they could start working on a fix. (If they have the time and the motivation to do that, of course.) But as long as it's unclear what triggers the bug that's been reported to them they are about as clueless as any random person using their software. I'd guess that all of this should be obvious to the kind of people reading lwn.net.

So if I read a comment containing little treasures like "a further issue at the level of our civilisation and society" and "[something] gives people with power [...] a habit of denying the lived experience of users and the struggles that users have with our software" and "life-long denial of the lived experience and struggle of other human people" (human people!) then, yes, Poe's law kicks in one again.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 20, 2020 15:45 UTC (Fri) by k3ninho (subscriber, #50375) [Link] (1 responses)

I've blocked your comments. I considered the consequences of my words in this forum and audience and I think what I said was a cogent, reasonable and meaningful contribution. With respect to Poe's original comment and the way that Wikipedia explains Poe's Law, you were already looking to parody my comment, a rhetorical tactic to dismiss as ridiculous something you can't dismiss as untrue.

Beyond that, I don't have to care how you respond.

K3n.

Systemd catches up with bind events

Posted Nov 20, 2020 23:09 UTC (Fri) by pebolle (guest, #35204) [Link]

> With respect to Poe's original comment and the way that Wikipedia explains Poe's Law, you were already looking to parody my comment, a rhetorical tactic to dismiss as ridiculous something you can't dismiss as untrue.

You might never read this but I only quoted your hyperbole verbatim. How is that parody?