svn commit: r904663 - /subversion/site/publish/contributing.html

[cm...@apache.org]

Author: cmpilato
Date: Fri Jan 29 23:19:11 2010
New Revision: 904663

URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?rev=904663&view=rev
Log:
* site/publish/contributing.html
  Fill out the last of the 'todo' sections.

Modified:
    subversion/site/publish/contributing.html

Modified: subversion/site/publish/contributing.html
URL: http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/subversion/site/publish/contributing.html?rev=904663&r1=904662&r2=904663&view=diff
==============================================================================
--- subversion/site/publish/contributing.html (original)
+++ subversion/site/publish/contributing.html Fri Jan 29 23:19:11 2010
@@ -91,8 +91,25 @@
 </li>
 
 <li><p style="font-weight: bold;">Write a test or reproduction script</p>
-    <p class="todo">Provide some reasons why writing a shell script to reproduce a
-       problem can help.  Maybe link to an example?</p>
+    <p>A well-written bug report is invaluable to developers.  A
+       reproduction recipe script, however, is worth a hundred
+       well-written reports.  Nothing helps developers understand what
+       you were doing when something went wrong better than being able
+       to do exactly that something themselves and see the same
+       results.  Unfortunately, many bug reports come in via the
+       mailing list or issue tracker and offer only prose descriptions
+       of the problem.  So another excellent opportunity for
+       contribution is to turn those prose reports into reliable,
+       repeatable reproduction scripts, perhaps starting with
+       a <a href="repro-template.sh">script template</a> and
+       customizing it to match the report.  This provides several
+       benefits to the developers: you save the developer(s) the work
+       of creating this script themselves; often, your script can be
+       ported directly to Subversion's regression test suite so that
+       the bug, once fixed, stays fixed; and having an additional set
+       of eyes on the bug report can reveal unforeseen nuances such as
+       the fact that the bug is specific to a particular dataset or
+       only happens under some other specific circumstances.</p>
 </li>
 
 <li><p style="font-weight: bold;">Submit a patch</p>