10:36 a.m.
So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup and
bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
So I think the next step is to get a test installation going and see if
roundup can be configured in a way that will satisfy most of the
requirements. I'll see if I can get something going as a temporary
installation that we can play with.
In the meantime it probably makes sense to start looking for a place to
host the tracker. Adrian, can you pick this up?
Kind regards,
Hans
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11:11 a.m.
>>>> Hans wrote:
Hans> So I think the next step is to get a test installation going and
Hans> see if roundup can be configured in a way that will satisfy most
Hans> of the requirements. I'll see if I can get something going as a
Hans> temporary installation that we can play with.
Good. I think that the email interface might be one of the most wanted
things to look at. So if you could swing that in the demo it would be
great.
Yours
--
%% Mats
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11:12 p.m.
Hans de Graaff <graaff(a)gentoo.org> writes:
So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup
and
bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
So I think the next step is to get a test installation going and see if
roundup can be configured in a way that will satisfy most of the
requirements. I'll see if I can get something going as a temporary
installation that we can play with.
In the meantime it probably makes sense to start looking for a place to
host the tracker. Adrian, can you pick this up?
Sounds good, also Mats' suggestion to get email interface testing
going.
I'll see if I can find a host.
I'd also be interested in what you would suggest for data importing
and exporting from the test installation.
Best regards!
Adrian
Kind regards,
Hans
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10:26 a.m.
Hans de Graaff writes:
So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup
and
bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
The most important requirement cannot be satisfied by any software.
Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
If we don't have that, why bother?
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6:59 a.m.
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
Hans de Graaff writes:
> So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup and
> bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
> around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
The most important requirement cannot be satisfied by any software.
Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
You mean the admin side or looking at the bugs? The admin side isn't
me, but I'll sure look at the bugs. From experience, I know I'd much
rather do that than periodically browse through 3-year-old e-mails.
--
Cheers =8-} Mike
Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla
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11:50 a.m.
On 9/7/07, Michael Sperber <sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
> Hans de Graaff writes:
>
> > So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup and
> > bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
> > around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
>
> The most important requirement cannot be satisfied by any software.
>
> Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
> somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
> doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
> but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
You mean the admin side or looking at the bugs? The admin side isn't
me, but I'll sure look at the bugs. From experience, I know I'd much
rather do that than periodically browse through 3-year-old e-mails.
Amen, brother. :-)
- Vin
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11:59 a.m.
"Vin Shelton" <acs(a)alumni.princeton.edu> writes:
On 9/7/07, Michael Sperber
<sperber(a)informatik.uni-tuebingen.de> wrote:
>
> "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen(a)xemacs.org> writes:
>
> > Hans de Graaff writes:
> >
> > > So looking through all the feedback it seems to be that only roundup and
> > > bugzilla may qualify for the set of requirements that have been thrown
> > > around, and from those roundup seems to be the most favored one.
> >
> > The most important requirement cannot be satisfied by any software.
> >
> > Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
> > somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
> > doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
> > but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
>
> You mean the admin side or looking at the bugs? The admin side isn't
> me, but I'll sure look at the bugs. From experience, I know I'd much
I'll do both to some extent.
Adrian
> rather do that than periodically browse through 3-year-old
e-mails.
Amen, brother. :-)
- Vin
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7:19 p.m.
Executive summary: If, as comments suggest, people would rather work
on bug threads and other current dev/review stuff through an ITS,
great, let's do it.
But regarding the reasons advertised in this thread, it's not going to
help with archived bugs for years, and it's not likely to help folks
like Hans much because I think it's going to be file and forget for
most issues, unless we have a volunteer who bugs developers to work on
stuff.
Adrian Aichner writes:
I'll do both to some extent.
Yeah, well, this "some extent" stuff is where I see a problem. Those
folks who have worked with commercial BTSes (eg, Red Hat or SuSE
Novell) are working with systems with both professional sysadmins and
assigned responsibilities for issue categories. Of the volunteer
systems I've worked with on a reasonably frequent basis (Debian,
Gentoo, DarwinPorts/MacPorts, Python, Mailman), Python is the only one
I continue to report bugs to unless I know a maintainer personally,
because they're basically just black holes. And guess what? Python
has volunteers who not only summarize the status of the issue tracker,
both statistically and brief summaries of recent changes, but also a
monthly (more like quarterly recently) thread summary of the dev lists.
>> rather do that than periodically browse through 3-year-old
e-mails.
>
> Amen, brother. :-)
Sure, me too. But we don't have a volunteer to input the -beta
archives, so for the next three years you're going to periodically be
browsing through three-year-old emails to get that information. Sure,
it will ramp up over time, but for the first year of operation, at
least, the ITS is not going to be a primary source of archived issue
information.
And as you may recall, about 5 weeks ago the only person Aidan
mentioned as regularly reviewing patches (which should go through the
issue tracker too) and who also takes on the burden of answering -beta
posts that go unanswered for more than a few days resigned from those
responsibilities. The rest of you guys do your thing, you do it well,
the product is good for what it is, but I don't see good vibes for the
users coming out of this, including the mega-users like Hans and Mike
Fabian who represent many thousands of distro users. Anything in this
area that's good for developers is good for users, definitely. But
most likely the users are going to have mixed feelings about the ITS,
at best, if we spin it as a way to get dev attention.
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8:27 p.m.
On Friday, 07. September 2007 20:19:00 Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
systems I've worked with on a reasonably frequent basis (Debian,
Gentoo,
You have reported exactly *one* bug on bugs.gentoo.org with your
＠xemacs.org address. Any other addresses you want me to check?
I continue to report bugs to unless I know a maintainer personally,
because they're basically just black holes.
Black holes? Excuse me? I'm working my ass off on those bugs I'm
responsible for (Yes, I'm a Gentoo dev) whereas you guys have failed to
release a decent XEmacs for how long now?
I've reported more bugs by mail to this list than you ever reported on
Gentoo and the biggest black hole I've seen around is *this* very list.
You can cite bugs from your head that have been lingering around for years
but you're worried about a bug tracker not being used or if it can be
used by email because you're too lazy to use a web-interface.
Sure, me too. But we don't have a volunteer to input the -beta
archives, so for the next three years you're going to periodically be
browsing through three-year-old emails to get that information.
That would be a waste of time. Nobody on this list is much likely to work
on years old stuff anyway if it hasn't been done already.
most likely the users are going to have mixed feelings about the
ITS,
at best, if we spin it as a way to get dev attention.
How exactly do you think your users feel about this list? Wasting their
time to report stuff to this black hole only to see his royal highness
Turnbull comment larmoyantly about stuff rotting in the archives.
Do you *really* think *years* later users still care about the stuff they
reported way back then? They are more likely to have either switched
editors long ago or to have lived to learn with the problem.
I'm sure, though, you guys will manage to discuss this whole thing to
death anyway. Heck, you alone could achieve that...
(Yes, I'm very much annoyed about your uninformed rambling about other
people's bugtrackers being "black holes".)
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9:20 p.m.
"Wulf C. Krueger" <wk(a)mailstation.de> writes:
On Friday, 07. September 2007 20:19:00 Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> systems I've worked with on a reasonably frequent basis (Debian,
> Gentoo,
You have reported exactly *one* bug on bugs.gentoo.org with your
＠xemacs.org address. Any other addresses you want me to check?
> I continue to report bugs to unless I know a maintainer personally,
> because they're basically just black holes.
Black holes? Excuse me? I'm working my ass off on those bugs I'm
responsible for (Yes, I'm a Gentoo dev) whereas you guys have failed
to release a decent XEmacs for how long now?
Releasing a decent XEmacs is a lot more work than fixing a bug
introduced downstream. Fixing bugs downstream usually does not
involve large redesigns.
Do you *really* think *years* later users still care about the stuff
they reported way back then? They are more likely to have either
switched editors long ago or to have lived to learn with the
problem.
I'm sure, though, you guys will manage to discuss this whole thing
to death anyway. Heck, you alone could achieve that...
I have the impression that Stephen would not particularly mind
somebody volunteering taking over his duties: I don't think he is
particularly pleased with how much work he is able to do in this
function, both because of his own time limits as well as the dearth of
contributions and workers. It is not like this would be an infrequent
phenomenon among part-time leaders of long-term free software
projects.
But as long as nobody even wants to try doing a better job, it is
pointless ranting at him. In particular since I don't think he is
particularly happy about his main job nowadays being repackaging
broken promises and hopes.
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
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12:18 a.m.
Wulf C. Krueger writes:
On Friday, 07. September 2007 20:19:00 Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> systems I've worked with on a reasonably frequent basis (Debian,
> Gentoo,
You have reported exactly *one* bug on bugs.gentoo.org with your
＠xemacs.org address. Any other addresses you want me to check?
Um, I wrote "worked with", not "reported to". It's not about
"my"
bugs, it's about the effectiveness of the whole system.
I've reported more bugs by mail to this list than you ever
reported on
Gentoo and the biggest black hole I've seen around is *this* very list.
Would you like to reread my post, and in the process discover that
that's *my* point? I suspect that I'm above average for Gentoo users
in terms of frequency of use of the ITS, and bug reporting in general,
if not to Gentoo. I'm certainly way above average for XEmacs users.
If I'm discouraged from reporting by what I see when looking up Gentoo
packages' issue histories, how much more so will users be discouraged
from reporting to an XEmacs ITS that behaves like xemacs-beta?
If you would like to explain how XEmacs responsiveness is going change
by installing a bug tracker, that would be of great interest. What I
see on Gentoo as well as the others I mentioned is that it depends on
the maintainer, not on the tracker. No?
As for the need for an email interface, yes, I believe that's a
genuine need, and I think *you* are being uninformed to deprecate it.
We have infrastructure to support email reports that is not going to
be reproduced for web reports for some time, and it's proven to help
in resolving problems.
That would be a waste of time. Nobody on this list is much likely to
work
on years old stuff anyway if it hasn't been done already.
In general I believe you are correct (again, that's one of my points),
but "nobody" is unfair to Aidan Kehoe, who has done exactly that on
(at least) one patch recently, and to Steve Youngs who actually fixed
(at least) one of the issues on jwz's wish list, which is from the
last millennium. There are also a number of things that have been
hanging fire for years now (GTK, for one) but I don't know if that
should count.
Do you *really* think *years* later users still care about the stuff
they
reported way back then?
Yes, I do, because they send us URLs to the archives where they
reported the problem or sent a patch years ago.
(Yes, I'm very much annoyed about your uninformed rambling
about other people's bugtrackers being "black holes".)
Er, those bug trackers are open to the public. It's easy enough to
find plenty of examples that XEmacs should not emulate.
But really, it's not about bug trackers, it's about the difference
between active maintainers who acknowledge responsibility for a well-
defined project, and XEmacs's current crew with "areas of interest"
they're reasonably good about, but few well-defined modules so that we
can automatically direct "pings" to appropriate places, and vast
tracts of unclaimed code. All of the projects I've mentioned (except
maybe MacPorts) have generally good reputations, but trackers for
modules without active maintainers still end up being black holes. Do
you deny that, even for Gentoo?
Now, the three posts in the thread preceding mine all disclaimed, at
least implicitly, responsibility for making sure that bugs get handled
at least with a WONTFIX and apology. The point here is to find a way
to do that given our very limited resources, or admit that we're not
going to do so. If not, well, enough XEmacs hackers think it will
make their work easier that an ITS is worth doing. But I don't want
it advertised as a major breakthrough in responsiveness, especially
not to people like you and Hans and Mike Fabian, if nothing major is
going to change.
So, back to the thread. Is a tracker going to help us to cover more
of the bug reports in a timely, useful way? If so, how, and what else
do we need to do to make that work?
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1:31 a.m.
Stephen> But regarding the reasons advertised in this thread, it's not
Stephen> going to help with archived bugs for years, and it's not likely
Stephen> to help folks like Hans much because I think it's going to be
Stephen> file and forget for most issues, unless we have a volunteer who
Stephen> bugs developers to work on stuff.
It also provides a place for new people to dive in and help. I'm sure
Stephen is familiar with the "for faster service review five" policy some of
the Python folks abide by. If you submit a patch or bug fix and you'd like
it processed in a more expedient fashion, simply review five other open
bugs/patches then send an email to the list (xemacs-beta in this case)
identify the issue numbers of the items you reviewed and what bug/patch the
author wants expedited. "Review" in this case can mean just about anything
helpful:
* I applied the patch in my XYZ environment. It worked (or didn't work)
for me.
* There are no changes to the documentation or test cases.
* I attached another patch with some extra documentation.
* I think this change could be better done this other way.
* etc.
Skip
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4:18 a.m.
skip(a)pobox.com writes:
It also provides a place for new people to dive in and help.
I'm
sure Stephen is familiar with the "for faster service review five"
policy some of the Python folks abide by.
Of course. That's a very concrete idea, a great idea in fact because
it can be implemented incrementally and ramped up. If we can get even
one of those commitments[1] from reviewers, it'll be a big step forward.
But we don't have any at this point, and that kind of thing is what
I'm asking for in connection with an ITS if we're going to bill it as
an improvement in service for XEmacs users and related developers.
But I'm just feeling my way forward, because the XEmacs Reviewers have
historically been a rather process-averse group. IMO, we were
impelled by the momentum of the enterprise-supported Lucid Emacs
(including the early years of XEmacs when Lucid was partnered by Sun),
and coasted on that until at the same time that a bunch of core people
got jobs at the same time that our most prolific contributor went back
to grad school.
Footnotes:
[1] As implemented by Martin van Loewis, basically you need to
summarize the content of five ITS threads (patch or bug), make a
recommendation for resolution, and explain why you make it. He seems
to give 2-5 day turnaround on evaluating and acting on the reviews
(which comes first) and then evaluating (and usually acting on) the
poster's request.
[2]
[2]
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8:46 a.m.
On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 18:26 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
I'd like to make it clear that I'm not volunteering for the position of
bug wrangler. My goal is to help set up a bug tracker and get it in a
usable state. That probably includes some wrangling in the beginning,
but I have too many other commitments to do this long term.
If we don't have that, why bother?
Even without such a role I believe a tracker may still be useful to
serve as a focal point for development as an easy and lightweight way to
get involved in XEmacs development. Obviously it is much more valuable
when someone actively marks duplicates, asks for clarification on bugs
when needed, etc., but I feel that even without that being done actively
there will be value, as people may build upon each others bug reports
and patches, something that is pretty much impossible now.
Kind regards,
Hans
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2:31 p.m.
> If we don't have that, why bother?
Hans> Even without such a role I believe a tracker may still be useful
Hans> to serve as a focal point for development as an easy and
Hans> lightweight way to get involved in XEmacs development. Obviously
Hans> it is much more valuable when someone actively marks duplicates,
Hans> asks for clarification on bugs when needed, etc., but I feel that
Hans> even without that being done actively there will be value, as
Hans> people may build upon each others bug reports and patches,
Hans> something that is pretty much impossible now.
In the Python world, new people often will report bugs to comp.lang.python
or python-dev(a)python.org (or even webmaster(a)python.org). The nearly uniform
response to such submissions is to ask the OP to submit them to the Python
bug tracker, simply so they don't get lost. This alone makes a bug tracker
valuable.
Skip
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10 p.m.
skip(a)pobox.com writes:
>> If we don't have that, why bother?
Hans> Even without such a role I believe a tracker may still be useful
Hans> to serve as a focal point for development as an easy and
Hans> lightweight way to get involved in XEmacs development. Obviously
Hans> it is much more valuable when someone actively marks duplicates,
Hans> asks for clarification on bugs when needed, etc., but I feel that
Hans> even without that being done actively there will be value, as
Hans> people may build upon each others bug reports and patches,
Hans> something that is pretty much impossible now.
In the Python world, new people often will report bugs to comp.lang.python
or python-dev(a)python.org (or even webmaster(a)python.org). The nearly uniform
response to such submissions is to ask the OP to submit them to the Python
bug tracker, simply so they don't get lost. This alone makes a bug tracker
valuable.
Let me say "we will get a tracker in the not-so-distant future."
Enough Reviewers have said they want it that it's worth providing a
tracker. The issue in my mind now is what expectations users should
have about direct effects on their XEmacs experience of its
installation.
My personal opinion is "zero", unless we can get some of the other
things I have asked for. I'm working on those, but will not make
promises yet.
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11:08 p.m.
Hans de Graaff <graaff(a)gentoo.org> writes:
On Thu, 2007-09-06 at 18:26 +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> Do we have a human who is willing to commit to making sure that
> somebody pays attention to the tracker for say the next 2 years? (That
> doesn't mean they have to do it personally, or for the whole period,
> but they do have to take responsibility for finding people to do it.)
And I thank you for that.
Let's get something experimental going.
Did you find time to play with roundup yet (I'm not through all of my
mail yet)?
I'd like to make it clear that I'm not volunteering for the position of
bug wrangler. My goal is to help set up a bug tracker and get it in a
usable state. That probably includes some wrangling in the beginning,
but I have too many other commitments to do this long term.
> If we don't have that, why bother?
Even without such a role I believe a tracker may still be useful to
serve as a focal point for development as an easy and lightweight way to
get involved in XEmacs development. Obviously it is much more valuable
when someone actively marks duplicates, asks for clarification on bugs
when needed, etc., but I feel that even without that being done actively
there will be value, as people may build upon each others bug reports
and patches, something that is pretty much impossible now.
I agree.
Best regards!
Adrian
Kind regards,
Hans
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6:18 a.m.
On Tue, 2007-09-11 at 00:08 +0200, Adrian Aichner wrote:
Let's get something experimental going.
Did you find time to play with roundup yet (I'm not through all of my
mail yet)?
No, I haven't had much time to work on this in the last weeks. The way
things look now I should have time for it this weekend.
Kind regards,
Hans
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3:04 p.m.
> Did you find time to play with roundup yet (I'm not through
all of my
> mail yet)?
Hans> No, I haven't had much time to work on this in the last weeks. The
Hans> way things look now I should have time for it this weekend.
Note that you can run Roundup from the source directory. No need to even
install it. You might also want to check out the reactors and such the
Python folks have developed. It's in Subversion, but I can't seem to
navigate to it from http://svn.python.org/.
Skip
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18 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
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Adrian Aichner -
David Kastrup -
Hans de Graaff -
Michael Sperber -
Skip Montanaro -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
Stephen J. Turnbull -
The XEmacs Package Smoketest -
Vin Shelton -
Wulf C. Krueger