LibreOffice developers are being challenged to confront  difficult bugs in a newly announced HardHacks project.

The idea comes from Bjoern Michaelsen who described the initiative  as a combined effort by contributors in QA and development that will improve the way that QA and development interact.

The idea is that on a 2-weekly cycle the QA team identify the five more critical bugs that need attention. The ESC (Engineering Sterring Committee) will then find a core developer for each bug who will have to report back in the following week.

To qualify as "HardHacks" bugs have to be on the list of Most Annoying Bugs, be important and urgent and also must have gone through initial processing of having reproduction scenarios and details of their occurrence.

Michaelsen admits that feedback about such difficult bugs might include requiring more information but argues:

Hopefully this will prevent that awkward silence on some bugs where everyone thinks its on the other to push this forward and help us collecting all the needed information on the most important and urgent bugs. It will certainly also keep the most pressing quality issues present in the minds of the developers, which might otherwise strive to implement the next shiny and exciting new feature a little too early or too often.

He also urges members of the community to join in:

If you are a developer in the LibreOffice community and already have a few patches for EasyHacks under your belt, feel free to look at the HardHacks too. The core developers will be relieved for any support they can get. Also note that these bugs are really hard nuts to crack, so failure is an option here. However, on the other hand, the benefits of solving the bug are huge: both core developers and QA will be full of utmost respect and gratitude for such an achievement.

So if you enjoy a hard challenge the place to look for HardHacks is  the next minutes of the ESC call.