Inform 7 bugs...

Authoring Inform 7
1

Hi!

Does anyone know what’s happening with the inform 7 development these days?

I’ve just started playing with i7, but I’ve come across a bug that’s been known about since november last year. I know this because I searched the bug tracker.

So… this bug I’ve got is just confirmed. There’s about 9 resolved bugs listed, and about 797 reported bugs. That’s not very good stats.

So, is everyone having a long holiday, or are lower level systems being worked on, or… what? Or, are the bugs just being fixed behind the scenes and when a new build comes out will most of the bug miraculously be resolved?

First post, but… this was what I wanted to talk about!! :slight_smile:

2

Yes.

3

I don’t know what bug tracker you’re going to, but I only see 227 unresolved bugs at inform7.com/mantis/view_all_bug_page.php

4

Yes, it’s more a “report bugs to us” then “we report fixes to you” website. I believe that every time a new version came out, all known bugs were fixed.

5

jennyW:

I realize your question is more about development status rather than a specific bug – but are you experiencing a bug that is preventing you from continuing your project? If so, you should post it here.

I took a quick look at the reports for Nov. '10 and it looks like there are workarounds for the serious bugs – mostly involving rephrasing of the source code. These are still bugs of course, but for the benefit of others following this thread: anyone running into a bug shouldn’t feel like they need to wait for the next build for it to be fixed. Someone here will almost certainly be able to patch or work around it. With the possible exception of the guys working on extending graphics and sound support, I don’t think there are many truly show - stopping bugs left in I7.

6

Part of the reason behind that dismal-looking figure is that bugs are moved into the closed state once their fixes have been released, and closed bugs are hidden by default.

7

Also, there tends to be no changes on the bug tracker except for new bugs appearing, until one day 30 bugs will be marked resolved all at once.

I imagine the “batch processing” cuts down on admin overhead.

Also, current intervals between Inform releases are at about 14 months, roughly.

8

Actually, despite how it may appear, bugs usually are marked as resolved at the time of resolution, and closed when the new build is actually released. The many-bugs-at-once days are generally days when Graham goes through a bunch of minor problems at once.

Most of the work that is happening on Inform these days (and this has been true for the last couple of years) is revision of core functionality to make the code more elegant, maintainable, and easy to read. That’s still happening, but it’s harder to show a progress bar for. It is very likely that a bunch of bug fixes will occur again before the next release.