How to really fix a bug

[kpreid]

If you're feeling virtuous:

1. Figure out what's going on.
2. Figure out why what's going on wasn't immediately obvious.
3. Make it so that such failures are caught and reported obviously.
4. Make it so that the rest of the system recovers from such failures.
5. Write a test for the bug, and a couple more while you're at it.
6. Write the actual fix.

(I ought to do more actual concrete blogging, like what I've been doing lately. This crossed my mind as a light and easy piece - I actually followed part of this procedure yesterday after pushing a version (of what, I'll get to later) that was rather broken.)