Tech.Report about Mercurial as in Eric IDE

[Steve Barnes]

On 05/06/14 02:23, Greg Ward wrote:
> [presumably text by Pietro Moras]
>>    With Eric people that was the usual way, whereas with Mercurial people
>>    such dialog revealed more and more difficult, as virtually any
>>    expressed perplexity, or question, or doubt, not to mention possible
>>    bug accounts, were considered little less than an affront, a crime of
>>    lese-majesty perpetrated by an impudent user.
> Pietro,
>
> I don't want to sound harsh, but I'm going to be completely blunt and
> honest. The problems you have had communicating with the Mercurial
> community are not problems with the Mercurial community. They are
> problems with your communication style.
>
> For starters, all of the questions you have posted demonstrate that
> you have only a very basic knowledge of Mercurial. That's OK, everyone
> starts out knowing nothing about Mercurial. But there is an excellent
> book available for free online, and the built-in help is generally
> pretty good. When you ask questions that demonstrate that you have not
> read (or not understood) the available documentation, people are less
> likely to help you. Or they are more likely to suggest that you start
> by reading the documentation.
>
> If you *have* read the available documentation and not understood it,
> you should say so. That indicates there is a problem with the
> documentation. It should be comprehensible to anyone who can read
> English.
>
> Also, when people try to answer your question in good faith but end up
> answering a different question than you thought you were asking,
> getting impatient and hostile does not help. It actually makes people
> ignore your questions and stop trying to help you. You should stop and
> consider if you are asking questions in the clearest possible way.
>
> (Hint: you're not asking questions in a clear way. The best way is to
> explain what you are trying to accomplish, what you tried, and how
> it's not working. Then people can actually tell you how to accomplish
> X, rather than explaining what Y does.)
>
>         Greg
Well said Greg, Can I add starting *_every_* question about how you are 
having a problem getting your software/users to interface with another 
package with "Possible Bug in /the software that *I* didn't write/" is 
less likely to get assistance than either "Problem understanding 
/<specific feature>/" or "Problem interfacing to /<specific method>/".  
The people who look at and reply to mails titled *bug* are primarily the 
authors of a software package that lots of people use and lots of other 
packages manage to interface to just fine.

I have found the mercurial comunity and authors to be very helpful as 
long as you read their answers, try their suggestions and ask clear 
questions, (rather than assume that they are the problem), and have on 
occasion been amazed at the patience shown in some question chains in 
this list.

Gadget/Steve
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