Add section on COM problems to README

[rbergen]

Description

Adds a section to the README concerning COM port problems on the Windows platform.

It includes another minor change to the GitHub CI workflow file so it no longer uses jq's --argfile option, which is no longer available in jq on Ubuntu 24.04.

Contributing requirements

• I read the contribution guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• I understand the BlinkenPerBit metric, and maximized it in this PR.
• I selected main as the target branch.
• All code herein is subjected to the license terms in COPYING.txt.

[robertlipe]

I'm AFK, but let's think about that last para more. The first gives kind of a fork: "The problem might be A or B". Te second speaks of "this", which perhaps has an unclear antecedent and doesn't appear to be effective against the second, regardless.

Is that a a crazy way to (mis)read that? I'll try to help come up with something better.

[rbergen]

"Crazy" is a rather heavy qualification which I won't apply, but after going over your comment and the second paragraph a few times I am certainly misreading the supposed misread, so to speak.

Maybe that is because the second paragraph is intended as a blanket statement to cover both tines of the fork, where you may think it's only intended to cover the second? Also, I'm deliberately not describing how to to use either tool to do the analysis, in part because the exact steps to follow depend on the tool that is used and the exact configuration (there's quite a range of lower-level Windows device that can be handed an "MS-DOS" COM port moniker.) Going through all that would go too far for a README like this; the point is to put people on the track of investigation with tools that have proven to be useful, following that track is up to them.

All that said, if you have an alternative phrasing that you think addresses the issue you are seeing, I'm happy to consider it as always.

[robertlipe]

I think "crazy" is fair game when used on oneself. :-)

I'm not certain I could defend this reading to my English instructor, but since the final sentence of a paragraph is often used as a segue to the next and the next paragraph uses the pronoun "this" but doesn't have an explicit antecedent, my reading of it does indeed anchor it to "example."

Maybe I'm just hyper because I can guess how tools like Procmon and Portmon work (I was a contributor to UNIX versions of the same), and I'm guessing they actually wouldn't catch Malwarebytes hijacking of the open() because there is probably not an actual entry in the tty or proc tables (they're probably doing an nlist and a mmap to read kernel data structures), so I'm guessing that it wouldn't actually find the Malwarebytes case anyway. But let's leave that door open because I agree we want this to be descriptive ("here's a problem") and not prescriptive ("Solve it by...using non-broken antivirus").

If that line of reasoning makes sense to you, let's pivot around avoiding 'this'. How about:

"If you experience such difficulties accessing serial ports, the tools in..."

?

Additionally, given the time we all just spent chasing seemingly known Malwarebytes defects, I'm tempted to throw them under the bus in the first paragraph and then back up the bus and do it again in the second. "...culprit, as may be disabling your antivirus." I feel less strongly about that change.

I'll happily accept no change here if you just think the whole thing is silly. I'm just explaining the speed bump I hit that caused me to re-parse it a few times.

+1, Approval.

[rbergen]

I think "crazy" is fair game when used on oneself. :-)

True. Still doesn't give me a free license to do the same to you too. ;)

How about:
"If you experience such difficulties accessing serial ports, the tools in..."

Proposal accepted.

Additionally, given the time we all just spent chasing seemingly known Malwarebytes defects, I'm tempted to throw them under the bus in the first paragraph and then back up the bus and do it again in the second. "...culprit, as may be disabling your antivirus." I feel less strongly about that change.

I tend to draw the line at recommending to the general public that they disable virus scanning. The advice could be "get something else that works", but that feels like overstepping my mandate in this context.

+1, Approval.

Thank you sir!

I'll update the second paragraph in line with your first proposal and then merge.

[robertlipe]

Thank you for humouring me. I like this result.

As an aside, particularly if English is indeed not your first language, I do really respect your command of it.

The advice could be "get something else that works",

I'm running out of nickels. :-)

RJL