Re: Bug tracker?
On 8/27/07, Hans de Graaff <graaff(a)gentoo.org> wrote:
On Mon, 2007-08-27 at 15:07 -0700, SL Baur wrote:
> Start with some requirements. Off the top of my head:
Thanks for the list!
> How do you want the bug reports to be stored? In file system,
> a relational database? Personally I'm biased towards databases,
> so long as they truly open source.
SQL Database would be my preference.
> You must have an XEmacs lisp client. You must be able to
> submit bug reports with this client. And personally, I could care
> less about any other kind of client, I wouldn't use it.
So we are back to GNATS. :-) I'm translating this to: must have a
well-defined API for custom clients so that an XEmacs lisp client can be
written. ;-)
No we're not back to GNATS. And to be specific, my day job right now *is*
writing an XEmacs lisp client front end for a bug tracking system
(proprietary, not useful to our purposes anyway, but whoa, does it scale
up).
And to be even more specific, I'd prefer if the lisp client behaved more
like my PostgreSQL bindings than an inferior SQL mode.
Given that email interaction seems a must as well, the current
report
bugs mechanism should be re-usable. In fact, it should work with the
current version given the large installed base of clients.
Report bugs is a good start, but ...
So many times we have been accused of following the Microsofts, etc.
and reimplementing things. Well, that was how we started. The Unix
architecture designed by hall-of-famers Thompson, Ritchie and Kernighan
has withstood the test of time. Big deal. The one major piece of software
that we all need is a bug tracking system that just plain works and works
well. We haven't done it.
I worked with Bugzilla some when I was Turbolinux and didn't like it.
What gives me a unique perspective right now is that my (internal) target
audience are people who despise the current bug tracking system within
the company and it's my job to make the interface better. (The code won't
be useful and that's another story, but there are no GPL violations involved,
it's just that some of my requirements are less than useless outside of the
specific environment).
> If there's an open source tool that does the job, use it.
And considering
> what Linus did with git in a short time, I too wouldn't rule out starting
> over from scratch, just so long as you know where you want to go.
Writing something new always sounds good until you realize the amount of
work involved. I'm not up for this given that I already have a day job
hacking code and writing a bug tracker doesn't fit our business
plan. :-)
Well, Linus did it, but git maybe was his day job. Before you pull another
stupid Steve (who chose CVS way back when it was the lesser of all evils,
and GNATS because he was just plain stupid) please refine the
requirements I've already posted. Absolutely one of the ingredients of git
was the fact that Linus already knew what he wanted before he started.
So go ahead, make requirements and excite me. Writing front end code
for a bug tracking system *is* my day job and while my wife is awaiting
her visa, I have time and I'm looking for something exciting to me to hack
on. And if there is anything we (the open source community) needs is a
great bug tracking system.
-sb
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