Re: bug tracking?

[Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de>]

At Thu, 15 May 2003 11:21:37 +0200 (CEST),
Jaroslav wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 15 May 2003, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> 
> > > Maybe that should be my next addition to the ALSA website. I get a lot 
> > > of bug reports through the docs page and it makes sense to reuse that 
> > > code for a bug reporting system.
> > > 
> > > Maybe it will have more psychological impact if it is hosted by ALSA 
> > > instead of sf.net (which seems to always have something wrong with it 
> > > anyway).
> > 
> > it would be really appreciated.
> > i personally dislike the current sf's bug-reporting system.
> 
> The question is, if we have power to maintain such large bug reports.
> From my experience, it works only few weeks until the system has many 
> unresolved reports. Then the database gets filled and only some bugs are 
> solved when our time permits. Also, when the database is large, it is
> a bit problematic to mark solved reports (especially old ones).

that's true.

i think the current sf system has the following problems.

- poor resolution of bugs

  for example, in the case of bugzilla, we can mark the items in
  better way: if you want to leave it, you can set LATER, WORKSFORME
  or REMIND.  also, many of bug reports may be marked as DUPLICATED.

- restricted (re)assignment

  if a bug is assigned to another person, you cannot resolve it.

- no structured view (classification)

  all the bugs are listed in a flat list.  too difficult to find
  a single bug.

- no mail communications

  only the web is access to the system.

- no template for necessary information

  e.g. alsa version, driver, chip/board name/model, output of lspci
       output of proc files, etc.


also, a moderator person would be helpful in addition to the automatic
assignment according to the given driver/function.

another interesting idea is to have a "tester" list for each driver.
when a bug report which is specific to a driver comes, it's delivered
to all testers (and the maintainer) of the driver, so that they can
check and follow up whether it works for them.


> I also think that we should definitely create a document what users should 
> describe to avoid many communication handshakes with the bug reporter.

providing a template would help for such a case, i believe.


Takashi


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