[OSM-dev] mod_tile stable version ?

[Kai Krueger]

Andy Allan wrote
> On 27 March 2013 14:09, Pieren <

> pieren3@

> > wrote:
> 
>> OSM data & tools are mostly developed by volunteers on their free
>> time.
> 
> And I'm sure we all strive to make high-quality tools. If someone
> encounters bugs, like crashes and broken documentation, then even just
> being told by email is valuable, or logging tickets, or mentioning it
> on IRC.

Indeed, although we as developers obviously try and catch as many bugs and
variants as possible before committing things, in the end we do rely on
people reporting bugs so that they can be fixed.

And reporting bugs often does work. For example I just had a very pleasant
experience with that today. A couple of weeks (or months ago), I was trying
to get renderd working with the latest snapshot of mapnik. It failed due to
a projection bug in (the unstable branch of) mapnik. However, instead of
reporting it, I just used mapnik 2.1 instead. Now yesterday some one else on
IRC ran into the same issue  again and wasted more time with it.  After
finally reporting it, the bug was fixed in less than 24 hours and no one
else needs to run into the issue any more. And in the process, I needed to
know nothing about the internals of Mapnik or be able to debug it, so it is
something that anyone can do.


Granted, the bug reports in mod_tile / renderd have not always been dealt
with that quickly.

Partly I think it is due to the fact that there are too many channels to
report bugs through. E.g. the osm track ticketing system, the github osm
repository issue tracking, the various forums, help.osm.org the mailing
list, irc, the wiki and other random pages were people mention / complain
about problems.

I am hoping to improve the situation, yes by creating yet another
communication channel... ;-) There is a new mailing list tile-serving (
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tile-serving ) where hopefully all
those bug reports from different sources can get collated and make sure they
reach all the people who can potentially fix them. Hopefully that will
improve the response time to bug reports and thus make overall better and
more reliable software.


Andy Allan wrote
>  There's no need to round on them for not having fixed all the
> problems single-handedly.
> 
> Of course, some people have unreasonable expectations, and we all tire
> of their demands. But things like being able to compile the software
> is a perfectly reasonable expectation.

Indeed, it would be helpful if users better realise the limitations of
developers and their time to spend on hoby projects, but at least as useful
would be if developers don't always respond to requests with the "Oh it is
open source, go fix it your self" attitude, as "fixing it your self" is
clearly not a reasonable response for the majority of people who don't have
the necessary specific skills.

Kai




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