On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 12:21:46PM +0000, Stokes, Ian wrote: > At the last OVS-DPDK community sync meeting the issue of bug reporting and > tracking was raised. Specifically > > 1. What is currently available? > 2. Are there any improvements that can be made in the process? > > As it stands the process to follow is defined at: > > http://docs.openvswitch.org/en/latest/internals/bugs/ > > An open vSwitch issue tracker repo has already been setup on GitHub at > > https://github.com/openvswitch/ovs-issues/issues > > From what I can see, the GitHub tracker seems to be used infrequently. Not > sure if this is because it's not required to report bugs or that people are > not aware of it? > > Is there a policy users should follow as regards reporting bugs on GitHub? > > Many groups will maintain their own internal bug tracking, I'm wondering > would it be good practice to have people report known bugs in the GitHub tool? > > I see the pros and cons as follows: > > Pros > > 1. GitHub provides a common location to discuss bugs, this helps avoid > duplication of effort as it can be easily flagged if someone is working on a > patch for said bug. > 2. If used frequently then it will provide an accurate picture of what known > issues are outstanding in OVS (easier then trawling through the mailing list). > 3. It could be used in conjunction with Patchwork to flag patches for review > that are bug fixes. (I've read the patchwork allows a field to link to an > external bug report url, I'm open to correction on this). > > > Cons > > 1. More overhead in general when creating the issue in GitHub when compared > to reporting via email to the ML. > > What do others think? Is their value in formalizing the bug report process to > use an external bug tracker?
As you say, there are pros and cons. In my experience, bug trackers sometimes work well. They can be a good way to keep track of issues that are outstanding and to collect information to figure out where those bug come from and try to find their root causes. But this "best case' usually happens only when there is someone who considers it a priority to invest time in the bug tracker. Otherwise, you end up with problems caused by users who submit bug reports without checking for existing similar bug reports (which is often perfectly reasonable from the user's point of view) and who fail to follow up to requests for further information, by developers who consider that bug reports in the system can be fixed anytime they want and therefore there's no reason to follow up immediately, and by a general sort of rot. You can end up with situations where someone mentions a bug and they just get referred to the issue in the tracker, and no one really does anything. The issues for simply reporting issues to a mailing list are to some degree the opposite. In OVS, we have both options, but I think that the issue tracker is little known enough that few people actually follow it or file bugs there. If you prefer to use the bug tracker, then it's there and I do try to follow along with the bugs filed there, and sometimes forwarding reports to the mailing list when it seems appropriate. It's a reasonable idea to use it, and I don't want to discourage anyone from using it. _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list disc...@openvswitch.org https://mail.openvswitch.org/mailman/listinfo/ovs-discuss
