by We Came, We Saw, We Squashed Bugs.
The Evergreen community held its first Bug Squashing Day August 26. The day was an opportunity for the entire community to focus on bugs: confirming bugs, coding bug fixes, testing patches, and merging signed-off patches into the core code. By the end of the day, eleven bug fixes were merged into the Evergreen core code. There were also several other bugs they made forward progress as testers provided feedback and contributors created patches. You can see a synopsis of the day’s activities in our August 2014 Evergreen Bug Squashing Day Activity sheet.
Here are some highlights from the day:
- A total of 17 people participated in some form of bug activity during some point in the 24 hour period of August 26.
- Six people requested sandboxes to test 11 bugs.
- Of the seven people who were able to sign off on bug fixes, three had not previously signed off on code.
- One patch merged into Evergreen on Bug Squashing Day came from a new contributor. Blake Henderson of MOBIUS had written fix for a bug where Fast Item Add was no longer opening a record after an item was created.
- Another patch created during Bug Squashing Day came from new contributor, Terran McCanna, who fixed an issue where KPAC wasn’t pulling in holds notification information. Although the code was not merged on August 26, it has since been added to the core Evergreen code.
- The oldest bug that received attention was Owning lib of asset.copy_location not visible in Item Attributes Editor UI. Chris Sharp tested the bug fix, and both he and Thomas Berezansky continued to work on code to improve the fix. This bug was initially reported in May 2011.
- The bug with the most heat that received attention was No error message when using duplicate barcodes in Serials Batch receive interface. Jennifer Pringle tested and provided feedback on the proposed fix for this bug.
Although Bug Squashing Day officially ended August 26, the momentum continued through the 27th as patches worked on during Bug Squashing Day continued to make their way to the Evergreen working repository.
Special thanks go to Blake Henderson (MOBIUS) and Thomas Berezansky (MVLC) for setting up the Sandboxes that made it easy for many in the community to test these bug fixes, and to Justin Hopkins (MOBIUS) and Jason Stephenson (MVLC) for volunteering them. The hardware for the sandboxes was provided by MOBIUS and MassLNC.
Also, a big thank you to the people listed below who participated in Bug Squashing Day and to the institutions that employ them for supporting their efforts to improve Evergreen for everyone.
- Thomas Berezansky, MVLC
- Steve Callendar, Equinox
- Sarah Childs, Hussey-Mayfield Memorial Public Library
- Garry Collum, Kenton County Public Library
- Martha Driscoll, NOBLE
- Kathy Lussier, MassLNC
- Terran McCanna, Georgia PINES
- Christine Morgan, NOBLE
- Michele Morgan, NOBLE
- Dan Pearl, C/W MARS
- Jennifer Pringle, BC LIbraries Cooperative
- Chris Sharp, Georgia PINES
- Ben Shum, Bibliomation
- Remington Steed, Hekman Library, Calvin College
- Yamil Suarez, Stan Getz Library, Berklee College of Music
- Dan Wells, Hekman Library, Calvin College
- Liam Whalen, BC Libraries Cooperative
Although Bug Squashing Day is over, the bug wrangling, fixing and testing doesn’t need to end. Sandboxes will continue to be available to the community beyond Bug Squashing Day. Anyone interested in testing a bug fix can submit a request with our Sandbox Request Form.