Posts for 2018 September

-Wmisleading-indentation

Post by Nico Brailovsky @ 2018-09-30 | Permalink | Leave a comment

This gcc switch is a few years old but I discovered it recently. I'm not sure if that means my code is always very clean or my toolchain too oudated... in any case, -Wmisleading-indentation (which you get with -Wall) warns about this gotcha:

if (foo)
   bar();
   baz();

Neat!


GitHub tip: Prefill a bug report

Post by Nico Brailovsky @ 2018-09-04 | Permalink | Leave a comment

Getting feedback from users is hard. In a platform such as Android, with apps evaluated in a couple of seconds, it's even harder.

While trying to get bug reports for VlcFreemote I found a neat GitHub trick: you can pre-fill a bug report by using url parameters. For example, check this link: https://github.com/nicolasbrailo/VlcFreemote/issues/new?title=foo&body=bar

Awesome! Takes a second and makes life much easier for bug-reporters!


Happiest bug report

Post by Nico Brailovsky @ 2018-09-02 | Permalink | Leave a comment

Something is wrong: I'm happy over a bug report!

A few years back I developed a VlcRemote control app for Android. According to this chart, I didn't actually save any time doing so. The time I spent spent developing the app is more than the cumulative time I would have spent by getting up from the couch and manually controlling VLC. That said, not having to leave the coziness of a warm blanket in winter probably made it worth the investment.

Not long ago I decided to submit this app to F-Droid. I'm too cheap to pay the 20ish dollars for Google App Store, and since I don't have any commercial interest I don't see the point. I didn't think I'd actually get any users there, but today I got my first bug report. So much happiness! You'd think I shouldn't be happy about my crappy software not-working, but hey, someone actually took the time to try it out. Even more, someone cared enough to submit a bug report!

Open source rules!