ACE, TAO, and CIAO Bug Fixing Policies

As ACE, TAO, and CIAO have grown in popularity the volume of mail on the mailing lists and USENET newsgroup comp.soft-sys.ace has grown considerably. While this increase is healthy, and a natural consequence of the larger number of ACE, TAO, and CIAO users, it is straining the resources of the researchers in the DOC group at Washington University, UC Irvine and ISIS to respond to all the traffic immediately. Prompt bug fixes from the DOC group also discourage the creation of a larger community of users and commercial support companies who have deep knowledge of how ACE, TAO, and CIAO work and can help provide bug fixes and new features.


Process for Reporting a Bug

To ensure the continued growth and maturation of ACE, TAO, and CIAO, and to allow the user and vendor communities to evolve, please make it a point to abide by the following policies:

Process for Submitting a Bug Fix

We encourage other ACE, TAO, and CIAO users to continue to help provide fixes and advice in response to postings on the mailing lists and newsgroup. If you have a patch that fixes a problem you've found with our software here's the process for submitting it:
  1. Use the latest contents of subversion repository, i.e., what's available from

    https://svn.dre.vanderbilt.edu/

  2. Create a ``unified diff'' and put this into Bugzilla at

    http://bugzilla.dre.vanderbilt.edu/

    and send an email to the appropriate mailing list(s) and/or newsgroup newsgroup summarizing what the problem was and you've done to fix the problem, i.e., use the ChangeLog format.

  3. Please create (or augment) a test program that validates your patch and integrate it into the ACE_ROOT/tests directory.

  4. If your patch is for a platform/compiler that aren't part of our autobuild scoreboard please consider contributing one or more autobuilds that can be used to keep track of changes to your platform/compiler combiation and ensure things continue to work as the ACE+TAO source code evolves.

  5. By submitting bug fixes submitters acknowledge that they have the right to do so, that any such submissions are given freely and unreservedly, and that they waive any claims to copyright or ownership. In addition, submitters acknowledge that any such submission might become part of the copyright maintained on the overall body of code that comprises the DOC software. By making a bug fix submission, submitter agree to these terms. Moreover, submitters acknowledge that the incorporation or modification of such submissions is entirely at the discretion of the moderators of the open-source DOC software projects or their designees.

Please be sensitive to the fact that the core DOC group team is very busy, so we often don't have time to address problems reported by non-sponsors. If you'd like an immediate response, please contact me about becoming a sponsor or contact one of the companies that provides commercial support for ACE, TAO, and CIAO.


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