Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 20 Nov 2004 21:03:34 -0600 (CST)
From:      Mark Linimon <linimon@lonesome.com>
To:        freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org, <bugmeisters@FreeBSD.org>
Subject:   CFD: patches to the Handling PR Guidelines article
Message-ID:  <Pine.LNX.4.44.0411202059260.23508-100000@pancho>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
This patch does the following:

 - adds text about handling unassigned PRs
 - adds text about default assignees and common assignees (specifically
   to address the continuing confusion about assigning to mailing lists
   vs. assigning to aliases)
 - adds more text about how misfiled PRs occur
 - adds more text about how to kill spam PRs.

This patch does not:

 - include any of the proposed elaborations on when a PR is stale.

Unless someone objects, I plan to commit in the next day or so.

mcl

Index: article.sgml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/FreeBSD/dcvs/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/pr-guidelines/article.sgml,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -u -r1.17 article.sgml
--- article.sgml	8 Aug 2004 13:43:56 -0000	1.17
+++ article.sgml	21 Nov 2004 02:55:01 -0000
@@ -233,6 +233,9 @@
 
     <itemizedlist>
       <listitem>
+	<para><link linkend="pr-unassigned">PRs not yet assigned to someone.</link></para>
+      </listitem>
+      <listitem>
 	<para><link linkend="pr-assigned">PRs already assigned to someone.</link></para>
       </listitem>
       <listitem>
@@ -250,6 +253,208 @@
       PRs is used for, when a PR belongs to one of these types, and what
       treatment each different type receives.</para>
 
+    <section id="pr-unassigned">
+      <title>Unassigned PRs</title>
+
+      <para>When PRs arrive, they are initially assigned to a generic
+	(placeholder) assignee.  These are always prepended with
+	<literal>freebsd-</literal>.  The exact value for this default
+	depends on the category; in most cases, it corresponds to a
+	specific &os; mailing list.  Here are some examples:</para>
+
+      <para>
+	<table id=default-assignees>
+	  <title>Default Assignees</title>
+	  <tgroup cols="3">
+	    <thead>
+	      <row>
+		<entry>Type</entry>
+		<entry>Categories</entry>
+		<entry>Default Assignee</entry>
+	      </row>
+	    </thead>
+
+	    <tbody>
+	      <row>
+		<entry>base system</entry>
+		<entry>bin, conf, gnu, kern, misc</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-bugs</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>architecture-specific</entry>
+		<entry>alpha, i386, ia64, powerpc, sparc64</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-&lt;arch&gt;</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>ports collection</entry>
+		<entry>ports</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-ports-bugs</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>documentation shipped with the system</entry>
+		<entry>docs</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-doc</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>&os; web pages (not including docs)</entry>
+		<entry>www</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-www</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>standards compliance</entry>
+		<entry>standards</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-standards</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>JVM problems</entry>
+		<entry>java</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-java</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>advocacy efforts</entry>
+		<entry>advocacy</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-advocacy</entry>
+	      </row>
+	    </tbody>
+	</table>
+      <para>
+
+      <para>Do not be surprised to find that the submitter of the
+	PR has assigned it to the wrong category.  If you fix the
+	category, do not forget to fix the assignment as well.
+	(In particular, our submitters seem to have a hard time
+	understanding that just because their problem manifested
+	on an i386 system, that it might be generic to all of &os;,
+	and thus be more appropriate for <literal>kern</literal>.
+	The converse is also true, of course.)</para>
+
+      <para>Certain PRs may be reassigned away from these generic
+	assignees by anyone.  For assignees which are mailing lists,
+	please use the long form when making the assignment (e.g.,
+	<literal>freebsd-foo</literal> instead of <literal>foo</literal>);
+	this will avoid duplicate emails sent to the mailing list.</para>
+
+      <note>
+	<para>Here is a sample list of such entities; it may
+	  not be complete.  Entries that have the short form are
+	  <emphasis>aliases</emphasis>, not mailing lists.</para>
+      </note>
+
+<!-- perhaps to add? acpi, ipfw -->
+      <para>
+	<table id=common-assignees>
+	  <title>Common Assignees</title>
+	  <tgroup cols="2">
+	    <thead>
+	      <row>
+		<entry>Type</entry>
+		<entry>Suggested Assignee</entry>
+	      </row>
+	    </thead>
+
+	    <tbody>
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with Linux or SVR4 emulation</entry>
+		<entry>emulation</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the networking stack</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-net</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with PicoBSD</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-small</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the ports framework
+		  (<emphasis>not</emphasis> with an individual port!)</entry>
+		<entry>portmgr</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the SCSI subsystem</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-scsi</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the sound subsystem</entry>
+		<entry>sound</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the threads subsystem</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-threads</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with <application>sysinstall</application></entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-qa</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>problem with the USB subsystem</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-usb</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by gnome@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>gnome</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by haskell@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>haskell</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by kde@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>kde</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by
+		  openoffice@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-openoffice</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by perl@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-perl</entry>
+	      </row>
+
+	      <row>
+		<entry>port which is maintained by x11@FreeBSD.org</entry>
+		<entry>freebsd-x11</entry>
+	      </row>
+	    </tbody>
+	</table>
+      <para>
+
+      <para>Ports PRs which have a maintainer who is a ports committer
+	may be reassigned by anyone (but note that not every &os;
+	committer is necessarily a ports committer, so you cannot
+	simply go by the email address alone.)
+      <para>
+
+      <para>For other PRs, please do not reassign them to individuals
+	(other than yourself) unless you are certain that the assignee
+	really wants to track the PR.  This will help to avoid the
+	case where no one looks at fixing a particular problem
+	because everyone assumes that the assignee is already working
+	on it.</para>
+
+    </section>
+
     <section id="pr-assigned">
       <title>Assigned PRs</title>
 
@@ -366,6 +571,14 @@
 	    header.</para>
 	</listitem>
 
+        <listitem>
+	  <para>A submitter sent a Cc: to a mailing list and someone
+	    followed up to that post instead of the email issued by
+	    GNATS after processing.  The email to the list will fail to
+	    have the category/PRnumber tracking tag.  (This is why we
+	    discourage submitters from doing this exact thing.)</para>
+	</listitem>
+
 	<listitem>
 	  <para>When completing the &man.send-pr.1; template, the submitter
 	    forgot to set the category or class of the PR to a proper
@@ -373,6 +586,15 @@
 	</listitem>
 
 	<listitem>
+	  <para>When completing the &man.send-pr.1; template, the submitter
+	    set Confidential to <literal>yes</literal>.  (Since we allow
+	    anyone to mirror GNATS via <application>cvsup</application>,
+	    our PRs are public information.  Security alerts should
+	    therefore not be sent via GNATS but instead via email to
+	    the Security Team.)</para>
+	</listitem>
+
+	<listitem>
 	  <para>It is not a real PR, but some random message sent to
 	    <email>bug-followup@FreeBSD.org</email> or
 	    <email>freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org</email>.</para>
@@ -487,8 +709,8 @@
 	<para>The email addresses that GNATS listens to for incoming PRs
 	  have been published as part of the FreeBSD documentation, have
 	  been announced and listed on the web-site.  This means that
-	  spammers found them.  Every day several messages with
-	  advertisements would reach GNATS which promptly files them all
+	  spammers found them.  Spam messages
+	  that reach GNATS are promptly filed
 	  under the <quote>pending</quote> category until someone looks
 	  at them.  Closing one of these with &man.edit-pr.1; is very
 	  annoying though, because GNATS replies to the submitter and
@@ -503,11 +725,35 @@
 	<para>All developers who have access to the FreeBSD.org cluster
 	  machines are encouraged to check for misfiled PRs and immediately
 	  close those that are spam mail.  Whenever you close one of
-	  these PRs it is also a good idea to set its category to
-	  <quote><literal>junk</literal></quote>.  Junk PRs are not
+	  these PRs, please do the following:
+
+	<itemizedlist>
+	  <listitem>
+	    <para>Set Category to <literal>junk</literal>.</para>
+	  </listitem>
+
+	  <listitem>
+	    <para>Set Confidential to <literal>no</literal>.</para>
+	  </listitem>
+
+	  <listitem>
+	    <para>Set Responsible to yourself (and not, e.g.,
+	      <literal>freebsd-bugs</literal>, which merely
+	      sends more mail).</para>
+	  </listitem>
+
+	  <listitem>
+	    <para>Set State to <literal>closed</literal>.</para>
+	  </listitem>
+	</itemizedlist>
+
+	<para>Junk PRs are not
 	  backed up, so filing spam mail under this category makes it
 	  obvious that we do not care to keep it around or waste disk
-	  space for it.</para>
+	  space for it.  If you merely close them without changing the
+	  category, they remain both in the master database and in
+	  any copies of the database mirrored through
+	  <application>cvsup</application>.</para>
       </section>
     </section>
   </section>



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.LNX.4.44.0411202059260.23508-100000>