Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:24:02 +0100 From: Peter Schuller <peter.schuller@infidyne.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Cc: Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com>, freebsd-bugbusters@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Improving the handling of PR:s Message-ID: <200801121924.10694.peter.schuller@infidyne.com> In-Reply-To: <20080111204148.GA4787@soaustin.net> References: <478556AD.6090400@bsdforen.de> <200801111935.50821.peter.schuller@infidyne.com> <20080111204148.GA4787@soaustin.net>
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--nextPart1532281.ZVzCsaMe5P Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline [not sure whether to remove -current from cc; keeping it for now] > So far it hasn't happened. We've set up the freebsd-bugbusters@ mailing > list and the #freebsd-bugbusters IRC channel on EFNet (and please join > us!) and the latter is where our last 2 bugathons took place. That's interesting. I'll try to get in on it. Perhaps this could use some m= ore=20 publicitly? Though I cannot claim I have gone out of my way to find exactly= =20 this, I was unaware of it in spite of spending quite a lot of time followin= g=20 =46reeBSD mailinglists. > Adding the second metric would cure one problem that you don't mention -- > which is that few people have the interest and patience to plow through > N-thousand PRs. It's not humanly possible to look at them all -- even > the new ones as they come in. There's simply too many. So, you create > an expectation "why bother, there's so many anyways". We need to break > that chain of expectation. A good fix is a good fix. The PR count will > never get to zero; I (with bugmaster hat on) would be thrilled if we can > get to the point of just steady-state. Perhaps if there was a good way to be sent a particular subset of PR:s? Unfortuantely the PR categories are not very granular. Something as simple = as=20 being able to subscribe to PR:s that match a regexp could work. My experience (albeight with a smaller bug database) is that generally, as= =20 soon as you expect people to manually poll some web site, things move more= =20 slowly. If you can manage a system where all the user has to do is process = is=20 mailbox, it becomes easier for all parties to get things done. In order for= =20 that to work, some method is need to minimize the amount of incoming E-Mail= =20 that the potential contributor is not interested in (otherwise you just get= =20 tired of weeding through it all). Also related to this: it may just be me, but how does GNATS even handle=20 mailouts to begin with? I always get the initial response from GNATS that a= =20 PR has been registered, but mostly I never see any automatic mailouts in=20 response to PR updates. I have not identifier exactly what is going on, but= =20 if other people are having this problem it might contribute to difficulty=20 getting feedback from users. Once again I tend to like the system where all= I=20 have to do is read my inbox, instead of manually keeping track of a list of= =20 PR:s I am somehow interested in. (This goes both from the POV of being an=20 original submitter, and from the POV of trying to process PR:s.) Also, individual users being able to add themselves as an interested party = (cc=20 in bugzilla speak, nosy in roundup speak, etc) to PR:s and such would help,= =20 or configure per-user settings for mailout, etc. I really don't want to start some kind of holy war on bug management softwa= re,=20 but I have to say that from the submitter POV I have always felt GNATS does= =20 not seem to be the most flexible system around (except for what seems to be= =20 very good E-Mail integration). > I think most get committed because a committer sees a PR come in on the > mailing list and grabs it. Much less often do committers go through the > database looking for things to fix. Again, the lousy "search/browse" > capabilities of the existing tool let us down here. That is exactly consistent with my experience in similar situations, and wh= at=20 I refer to above. =2D-=20 / Peter Schuller PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <peter.schuller@infidyne.com>' Key retrieval: Send an E-Mail to getpgpkey@scode.org E-Mail: peter.schuller@infidyne.com Web: http://www.scode.org --nextPart1532281.ZVzCsaMe5P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.4 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQBHiQXKDNor2+l1i30RAupyAKC70yFXuFAgwLATMplryTZnO26vUwCeNw5E ixsKyQoMLy8cxpZXPV2lBJo= =4Ugi -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --nextPart1532281.ZVzCsaMe5P--
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