On 7/25/06, Philip Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I suspect your approach applies to a more informal less pressured environment, when most of the software is working and the time between bug reports is greater than the time to fix.
OpenSceneGraph development is pressured, there is over 1400 developers using it out there. Its no small project.
My experience is that during the early stage of a big development, the pressure is to convert designs into code, and that bug reports arrive faster than fixes which means that bugs must be prioritised (but not forgotten).
My philosphy is *always* prioritize bug fixes over new feature development.
Reports on a mailing list are great, but get mixed up with emails covering other topics. A separate bug list provides a quick way of looking up outstanding bugs and the priority assigned to fixing each bug.
Umm in my experience bug logs always end up with practically all bugs as being longed as criticial. A really important part of fixing bugs, and its the fixing bugs which is really important part, not the logging of them, is getting the fixer and reporter involved at a personal level as early as possible. If you leave it too long then the reporter has moved on to other work, and might not even be able to recreate the original problem. Bug tracking software all too easily seperates the fixer from the reporter, and lets the reporter vent their anger at an inhuman interface, without giving enough thought to the needs of the fixer, and its the needs of the fixer which is the fundemantal things that needs to be addressed to fix bugs.
When a bug is fixed, the bug report is removed from the list and stored on a resolved bug list. (If the bug report were imediately deleted, it would leave open the possibility of someone using older software reporting a bug that had already been fixed.) Perhaps the halfway house is to request bug reports carry a keyword, such as bug, in the subject line so that individual recipients can use a mail rule to push the bug reports into a different mailbox folder. Everyone can then be happy - there is no separate buglist to maintain and the bug reports are held apart from other reports for quick searches. The only mandraulic activity is to pull out reports when they are reported as fixed.
Indeed this is is the smart way to highlight bugs, a simple keyword addition to a subject line such a "bug report:". Its not critical though. I filter email as they come in a mark ones that need attention even I can't attend to any one time. Broadcast approach to bugs is improtant, its one of the key ways of leveraging the community. Things that arn't in your face often just sit in the background largely ignored. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://openscenegraph.net/mailman/listinfo/osg-users http://www.openscenegraph.org/
