[PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[Jonathan Wakely]

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Should we make this change?

Firstly, these bullet points are full sentences and so should end with
a period (or smiley, in some cases).

Secondly, releases are not issued by the GNU Project at all, they're
issued by the GCC release managers.

Finally, "releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by ..." has confused
at least one bug reporter, and I think saying "unofficial releases or
snapshots" makes it slightly clearer. Comparatively few users actually
use a self-built GCC based on official source tarballs, but that's OK.
Distro builds tend to be much closer to upstream these days, and we
rarely reject bug reports where the reporter is using a build from
Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or whatever (unless it really is caused by a
downstream patch and doesn't reproduce with a gcc.gnu.org release).

OK for wwwdocs?



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commit b7bf1f0b9f708673feeb13fcdbc1d461b82ad6d6
Author: Jonathan Wakely <jwakely@redhat.com>
Date:   Tue Jul 27 16:08:10 2021 +0100

    Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

diff --git a/htdocs/bugs/index.html b/htdocs/bugs/index.html
index 80dac392..5143350a 100644
--- a/htdocs/bugs/index.html
+++ b/htdocs/bugs/index.html
@@ -102,11 +102,11 @@ three of which can be obtained from the output of <code>gcc -v</code>:</p>
   <li>An error that occurs only some of the times a certain file is
   compiled, such that retrying a sufficient number of times results in
   a successful compilation; this is a symptom of a hardware problem,
-  not of a compiler bug (sorry)</li>
+  not of a compiler bug (sorry).</li>
 
   <li>Assembly files (<code>*.s</code>) produced by the compiler, or any
   binary files, such as object files, executables, core files, or
-  precompiled header files</li>
+  precompiled header files.</li>
 
   <li>Duplicate bug reports, or reports of bugs already fixed in the
   development tree, especially those that have already been reported
@@ -114,14 +114,14 @@ three of which can be obtained from the output of <code>gcc -v</code>:</p>
 
   <li>Bugs in the assembler, the linker or the C library.  These are
   separate projects, with separate mailing lists and different bug
-  reporting procedures</li>
+  reporting procedures.</li>
 
-  <li>Bugs in releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by the GNU
-  Project.  Report them to whoever provided you with the release</li>
+  <li>Bugs in unofficial releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by
+  the GCC project.  Report them to whoever provided you with the release.</li>
 
   <li>Questions about the correctness or the expected behavior of
   certain constructs that are not GCC extensions.  Ask them in forums
-  dedicated to the discussion of the programming language</li>
+  dedicated to the discussion of the programming language.</li>
 </ul>
 
 <h3 id="where">Where to post it</h3>

Re: [PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[Martin Sebor]

On 7/27/21 9:16 AM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc-patches wrote:
> Should we make this change?
> 
> Firstly, these bullet points are full sentences and so should end with
> a period (or smiley, in some cases).

I'd expect that to be relatively uncontroversial ;)

> 
> Secondly, releases are not issued by the GNU Project at all, they're
> issued by the GCC release managers.

I (and I suspect most users unfamiliar with the inner workings of
the project) think of release managers as acting on behalf of
the whole project, so even though they technically cut the release
it's still put out by the project as a whole.

> 
> Finally, "releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by ..." has confused
> at least one bug reporter, and I think saying "unofficial releases or
> snapshots" makes it slightly clearer. Comparatively few users actually
> use a self-built GCC based on official source tarballs, but that's OK.
> Distro builds tend to be much closer to upstream these days, and we
> rarely reject bug reports where the reporter is using a build from
> Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or whatever (unless it really is caused by a
> downstream patch and doesn't reproduce with a gcc.gnu.org release).
> 
> OK for wwwdocs?

It makes sense to me.  I'd also correct the grammar in "report them
to whoever" either by changing it "report them to whomever" or by
rephrasing it (e.g., "report them to the provider of the release").

Martin

Re: [PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[Mike Stump]

On Jul 27, 2021, at 10:30 AM, Martin Sebor via Gcc-patches <gcc-patches@gcc.gnu.org> wrote:
> On 7/27/21 9:16 AM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc-patches wrote:
>> Secondly, releases are not issued by the GNU Project at all, they're
>> issued by the GCC release managers.
> 
> I (and I suspect most users unfamiliar with the inner workings of
> the project) think of release managers as acting on behalf of
> the whole project, so even though they technically cut the release
> it's still put out by the project as a whole.

I agree.  The GCC releases we put out are GCC project releases, and GNU project software releases.

Re: [PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[Jonathan Wakely]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2021 at 18:30, Martin Sebor <msebor@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 7/27/21 9:16 AM, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc-patches wrote:
> > Should we make this change?
> >
> > Firstly, these bullet points are full sentences and so should end with
> > a period (or smiley, in some cases).
>
> I'd expect that to be relatively uncontroversial ;)
>
> >
> > Secondly, releases are not issued by the GNU Project at all, they're
> > issued by the GCC release managers.
>
> I (and I suspect most users unfamiliar with the inner workings of
> the project) think of release managers as acting on behalf of
> the whole project, so even though they technically cut the release
> it's still put out by the project as a whole.

Which is why I didn't mention release managers in the actual patch. I
changed "GNU Project" to "GCC project", because the GNU Project does
not do our releases, we do (via the RMs).



>
> >
> > Finally, "releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by ..." has confused
> > at least one bug reporter, and I think saying "unofficial releases or
> > snapshots" makes it slightly clearer. Comparatively few users actually
> > use a self-built GCC based on official source tarballs, but that's OK.
> > Distro builds tend to be much closer to upstream these days, and we
> > rarely reject bug reports where the reporter is using a build from
> > Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or whatever (unless it really is caused by a
> > downstream patch and doesn't reproduce with a gcc.gnu.org release).
> >
> > OK for wwwdocs?
>
> It makes sense to me.  I'd also correct the grammar in "report them
> to whoever" either by changing it "report them to whomever" or by
> rephrasing it (e.g., "report them to the provider of the release").
>
> Martin
>

Re: [PATCH] wwwdocs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by" in bugs web page

[Gerald Pfeifer]

Hi Jonathan,

On Tue, 27 Jul 2021, Jonathan Wakely via Gcc-patches wrote:
> Firstly, these bullet points are full sentences and so should end with
> a period (or smiley, in some cases).
> 
> Secondly, releases are not issued by the GNU Project at all, they're
> issued by the GCC release managers.
> 
> Finally, "releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by ..." has confused
> at least one bug reporter, and I think saying "unofficial releases or
> snapshots" makes it slightly clearer. Comparatively few users actually
> use a self-built GCC based on official source tarballs, but that's OK.
> Distro builds tend to be much closer to upstream these days, and we
> rarely reject bug reports where the reporter is using a build from
> Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or whatever (unless it really is caused by a
> downstream patch and doesn't reproduce with a gcc.gnu.org release).

I noticed the first part went in back in August 2021, the second did not, 
likely because I failed to ack the patch (and the first part was obviously 
obvious).

Apologies for that. I now pushed the remainder of the original patch as
well; it's just simpler that way.

Gerald


commit 303c5592f31a73cc90e2a799fe0455873db512b2
Author: Jonathan Wakely <jwakely@redhat.com>
Date:   Sun Mar 12 10:34:21 2023 +0100

    bugs: Clarify meaning of "not issued by"

diff --git a/htdocs/bugs/index.html b/htdocs/bugs/index.html
index 765d8c67..3744a28f 100644
--- a/htdocs/bugs/index.html
+++ b/htdocs/bugs/index.html
@@ -116,8 +116,9 @@ three of which can be obtained from the output of <code>gcc -v</code>:</p>
   separate projects, with separate mailing lists and different bug
   reporting procedures.</li>
 
-  <li>Bugs in releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by the GNU
-  Project.  Report them to whoever provided you with the release.</li>
+  <li>Bugs in unofficial releases or snapshots of GCC not issued by
+  the GCC project.  Report them to whoever provided you with that
+  version.</li>
 
   <li>Questions about the correctness or the expected behavior of
   certain constructs that are not GCC extensions.  Ask them in forums