I've noticed a number of perl bugs being found, reported, and worked out lately, both on perlmonks and elsewhere. (Usually usenet is the elsewhere, but isn't it always?) This is a good thing--perl, like all software, has bugs in it, and they need identifying. Many of the threads on PM result in reports to p5p via perlbug. This is also a good thing, as it's tough to fix a bug you've not been told about.

Unfortunately the bug reports have often been... sparse. A mildly descriptive subject (which is fine) and a bug report that reads "See the discussion on perlmonks, at http://...". This, unfortunately, is bad.

When making a bug report, the report itself needs to have enough information in it to reproduce the problem. Someone should, while completely off-line, be able to read the bug report and (hopefully) do something about the bug. Putting a link to extended discussion on the problem in the report is fine, but the report itself should be sufficient to work with.

If that information's not handy, the bug is much less likely to be looked at. Following the link, when it's not even clear (because of insufficient information in the report) that there even is a bug, is enough extra work that far fewer people are likely to look at the bug, and the fewer eyes the lower likelyhood that the bug will be fixed.

In reply to On making bug reports (For both perl and non-perl software) by Elian

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