Zombie-speak

The Gnus development girls & boys are always happy to receive bug reports. «Whee», they are often heard to exclaim to one another. «Now we just have to totally rewrite that thingamajig that is executed when you put that whotzit in that flobzat. Have we died and gone to heaven?» they might further babble at each other. So, if you landed on this page through following those clever instructions you got back after sending a bug report -- thank you for helping us stamp out bugs.

However, the bugfixing girls & boys are not, how shall we put it, long-winded in their responses, in general. I'm sure they would like to do nothing else than exchange witty repartee with all and sundry for months on end. Fortunately, they don't do that, but instead they jot off short, incoherent responses before grabbing the next bug report that falls off the bug conveyor belt.

Below is an explanation of what typical zombie responses really mean.

• «Yup. Fix in the next release.» This means that the bugfixing zombie has actually managed to locate the bug, and has fixed it.
• «Fix in the next release.» This response looks much like the one above, but means that the bugfixing zombie was unable to reproduce the bug, but found something that looked suspicious and fixed that. If you get this response, you should make sure that the bug really has gone away after the next release has been released. If the bug is still there, write a new bug report with more information than the previous one.
• «I think I have fixed the bug in the next release. Please check after it has been released.» This means that the bug is probably still there. If it actually disappears, please drop a note saying whether it has gone away or not after the next release has been released.

There. that wasn's so difficult, was it?

The bugfixing zombie rarely answers questions about usage; ask on the newsgroup "gnu.emacs.gnus" instead.

The official Gnus homepage is www.gnus.org.

On Gnus Versions

• GNUS 1-4.1 were all written by Masanobu UMEDA. The zombies do not deal with problems with those releases.
• (ding) Gnus 0.1-0.99.28 were alpha releases written by that Lars guy.
• Gnus 5.0-5.1 was the official release of that alpha.
• September Gnus 0.1-0.97 were alpha releases done in late '95 to early '96.
• Gnus 5.2.x is the official release of that alpha.
• Red Gnus was the next cycle, and was released as Gnus 5.4/5.5.
• Quassia Gnus followed on, and was released as Gnus 5.6/5.7.
• Pterodactyl Gnus is the current alpha series has been released as Gnus 5.8/5.9.
• Oort Gnus is the current development series.