Re: kernel.org tooling update

Randy Dunlap
2025-12-12T23:54:35Z

On 12/12/25 3:48 PM, Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2025 14:30:37 +0100
> Thorsten Leemhuis <linux@leemhuis.info> wrote:
>
>> he update, much appreciated!
>>
>> On 12/10/25 05:48, Konstantin Ryabitsev wrote:
>>
>>> ### Bugzilla
>>>
>>> It may be time to kill bugzilla:
>>
>> Thx for bringing this up, as I a few months ago again looked somewhat
>> closer at the state of how well our bugzilla is working for the core
>> kernel. I didn't post the analysis in the end, but to me it looked like
>> the state of things was round the same as it was three years ago -- when
>> it wasn't working well, which was among the reasons why we came close to
>> abandoning bugzilla for kernel bugs[1].
>>
>> [1] for those that don't remember, see https://lwn.net/Articles/910740/
>> and
>> https://lore.kernel.org/all/aa876027-1038-3e4a-b16a-c144f674c0b0@leemhuis.info/
>>
>>
>>
>>> - despite periodic "we're not dead yet" emails, it doesn't appear very
>>> active
>>> - the upgrade path to 6.0 is broken for us due to bugzilla abandoning the
>>> 5.2 development branch and continuing with 5.1
>>> - question remains with what to replace bugzilla,
>>
>> To me it looks like most subsystems don't care much or at all about
>> bugzilla.kernel.org. This made me wonder (and maybe you could gather
>> some opinions on this in Tokyo):
>>
>> * How many kernel subsystems have a strong interest in a bug tracking
>> solution at all[2]? And how many of those might be happy by using some
>> external issue tracker, like those in github (like Rust for Linux,
>> thesofproject, and a few others do), gitlab (either directly, like
>> apparmor, or self-hosted, like the DRM subsystem)?
>>
>> * Does the kernel as a whole need a bug tracking solution at all to
>> receive reports? We for now require email for patches, so why not for
>> bugs as well, unless a subsystem really wants something (see above)?
>
> I am the default target for all networking bugzilla submissions.
> Would be very happy to just see bugzilla die.
> Right now, all I do is do a quick scan and respond to the junk submissions
> and forward the rest to the netdev mailing list with a note on the bug
> to go there in the future.
>
> Issue tracking is not in the workflow for the community.

which can be observed by the number of Categories/Components that don't
have an assignee -- even a mailing list. Which should be "fixed" IMO.
I.e., we are actively helping bugzilla entries to be ignored.

I don't think it's the tool itself. More likely something else...

--
~Randy