Lots of things.
- First: read the question below. Try to resolve the issue yourself.
- Second: read the outstanding bugreports at
pyjamas bugreports.
Is there anything that vaguely looks related? Read up on it.
Does the discussion there have any resolution?
- Third: decide whether the issue is best reported to the bugtracker
or to pyjamas-dev or to both. The point of the bugtracker is to
be a formal record of issues that need to be fixed. People's
heads don't hold large amounts of information all the time, and
priorities have to be assigned to tasks. If you want the issue
to be fixed for you, you need to make life easier not less easy
for the developers to fix it.
- Fourth: if you decide to contact pyjamas-dev, before you
do so, there are some important things that you need to be aware of.
- pyjamas is a part-time community-driven project, not a
corporate-funded one. your absolute top priority in contacting
the development list is therefore to make it easy for people
to respond. the way to make it easy for people to respond is to do
your homework: to provide absolute unambiguous and full information
necessary to get people "up to speed".
- To that end: if you have a problem, provide a complete worked example
that can be downloaded and run as-is, with no additional effort
required other than a few simple commands to install it and run it.
- Provide full context.
- Provide full context.
- Provide full context.
- Provide the version of the compiler; the version of python; the
operating system; provide a complete list of all commands that
had been run in order to get you to the point where you are, now.
- If you are running an out-of-date version of the compiler, update
the application to the latest svn version of the compiler
before contacting the list. There are insufficient
resources to cater for older compilers. You are welcome to spend
your time back-porting fixes to the older releases.
- In short: think. "Will the people receiving this have
to be mind-readers in order to answer my question?". "What work will
they have to do, to get me the results
that I want?"
- Give some sort of clear indication of a willingness to
work with the people of the list to resolve the issue that you
have. A "hello, I'm new here, thank you in advance for any
help" is usually all it takes, making the difference between
the reader deciding to provide a terse but informative reply or
a more detailed (and probably more useful) one.
- When you get a response, do what you've been recommended to do!
You got an answer, so why would you want to be disrespectful to the
person who spent their personal time and money in composing a reply,
by not following their advice? If you don't understand the
reply, that's fine - say so: there's no harm in saying,
"I don't understand".
- The other alternative is: if you're not going to do what you've
been recommended to do, give really good reasons as to why.
The point is: don't risk alienating the very people you need help
from, in order to fix the problem. Entertain them with the
antics that you're getting up to by getting into a horribly
tangly mess: yes. Irritate them by wasting their time: no.
- Once you've managed to solve a problem (in part or in full),
say so. And, if the solution involved following advice
given, say thank you!. The former is important for anyone
else who may encounter the same problem. The latter is important
for if you want to ask their advice ever again. If you don't
say "thank you", don't be surprised to get a curt response next
time, if you get one at all.
[Personal note from lkcl: I've done a lot of free software development,
and I've never, despite trying, been able to cover exactly everything,
first time, on reporting a problem / asking for help. Software development
is complex. "Full" reports are rare and time-consuming for the person
writing them, but that's just part of your job of writing
your app. The key thing is that there should be enthusiasm
behind what you're doing: a good developer on a free software project will
be able to instantly tell that you're being enthusiastic (and are showing
a willingness to adapt), and will likely make allowances that they would
otherwise not tolerate.
The bottom line is, therefore: use your judgement; provide as much
information and context as you can; give some sort of indication of
willingness to follow the advice given; follow the advice
given; provide people with evidence that you've followed it (or an
explanation as to why you haven't), and say thank you if the advice helped.]