do ERR messages imply bugs?

[chris ahrendt]

Ben Klein wrote:
> 2009/4/12 Vincent Povirk <madewokherd+8cd9 at gmail.com>:
>   
>> Chris Ahrendt filed a few bugs recently for "err" messages encountered
>> during test runs  (17997 and 17998 at least).
>>
>> Vitaliy claims they are invalid.
>>     
>
> 17997 looks invalid due to missing Wine Gecko. 17998 looks like
> uncleanliness in the test to me (trying multiple times to lock a
> surface that's already locked). Perhaps this is the point of this
> particular test, trying to determine if Wine will crash if the lock is
> attempted multiple times? I really can't say, but no programmatic
> errors have been reported in either case.
>
> In both it's "Wine gives an err message on stderr", but no loss of
> functionality is reported. If they can be fixed without changing the
> *intent* of the code (17998 in particular), then it's my opinion that
> they are valid as enhancements (which is what the severity is set to).
>
>   
>> In order to explain clearly why they are invalid, I looked up the
>> official definition of ERR in the Wine Developer's Guide:
>>
>> "Messages in this class indicate serious errors in Wine, such as as
>> conditions that should never happen by design."
>> (http://www.winehq.org/docs/winedev-guide/debugging)
>>
>> This goes against my preconceived notion. Bad developer's guide, bad.
>>
>> To my even greater astonishment, all the ERR messages I've added fit
>> this description. Bad past self, bad.
>>     
>
> I'd say an ERR indicates a potential and/or serious loss of
> functionality for a program you're running in Wine. I'm pretty sure
> that in some cases, ERRs will be triggered in Wine even when that
> particular thing doesn't work in Windows.
>
>   
>> The consensus (or so I thought) seems to be that ERR messages are
>> simply for debugging and can safely be ignored as long as nothing is
>> going wrong in a running program (in this case, as long as the tests
>> are not failing).
>>     
>
> This is certainly true for FIXMEs (which are by definition known bugs,
> and in fact can cause loss of functionality in some cases). In the
> case of ERRs, if the program runs fine, then all is well :) It's just
> that it's much more likely for an ERR to be associated with a broken
> program or loss of functionality.
>
>   
>> "Serious errors" sounds like something that should be worth
>> investigating, even without visible failures.
>>
>> How do we resolve this discrepancy?
>>     
>
> Probably by disagreeing with everything I've said :P
>   

So in the case of the multiple locks and err's the output of the test 
run is the same for bug 7284 
<http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7284> then this bug or output 
would be invalid as well?

C