On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Jeff Trawick wrote:
What must be done to the bug tracker we have now to track the patches better?
(I'm not against having something better, but I don't want to see a delay in waiting for some magic tool.)
We can already assign the keyword "PatchAvailable" for entries and mark entries as enhancements or bugs of various severities. People with patches to submit can already manage the data entry themselves.
I did try to use the PatchAvailable keyword for a while. I even posted helpful links like this to the dev list: http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/buglist.cgi?bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED&product=Apache+httpd-1.3&product=Apache+httpd-2.0&keywords=PatchAvailable&keywords_type=anywords
Hopefully there is a way to query these entries that haven't been modified in a while.
I'm sure the people who skim the bug database traffic wouldn't mind making sure that keyword gets assigned.
and also we need to make sure that random patches that show up on dev@ end up being entered in bugzilla with a patch in the correct format.
The patch manager doesn't necessarily have to do all the work of getting patches documented in the right place. S/he just has to make sure that somebody does it for every patch submitted during her/his tour of duty.
Hopefully there is more awareness of the problem of dropped patches now than there was when you pointed out the PatchAvailable use before.
The biggest problem is:
b) making sure the submitter gets some response in a reasonable time
Perhaps one thing to do would be to more strongly encourage people, as an entry to apache development, to go through these PatchAvailable bugs, and do formal reviews and tests of the code. Of course a core team member needs to do the final commit, but it is easier if there is evidence of reviews.
that would definitely help... I'm anxious to see what the response would be... surely we have some generic doc on what people can do to help out with httpd development that we can point to on the list periodically? or pay a spammer to let all our users know?
I'd like to write up some notes tomorrow as a draft of a new "how to submit a patch", pointing to existing info on httpd patches and describing the current bugzilla capability. Once we have something to point people to so we don't have to keep explaining the process and so they don't have to look in too many different places for all the info, I'd like to play patch manager for a while. This will die out as surely as your previous PatchAvailable attempts if nobody else lifts a finger, but I'm ever hopeful :)
