Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 11:53 PM, Mike Frysinger  wrote:
> please refrain from posting html to mailing lists

Apologies - just migrated to Gmail and didn't notice the obnoxious
default behavior...

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Mike Frysinger]

please refrain from posting html to mailing lists
-mike


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Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[George Prowse]

On 28/12/2010 21:11, Rich Freeman wrote:
On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Jeroen Roovers > wrote:


On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:31:28 +0100
Maciej Mrozowski mailto:reave...@gmail.com>>
wrote:

> Well, before I became developer, I had a quite unproductive
> discussion on IRC with Jeroen on that matter (jer opting for status
> quo and telling me I have no idea what bug wrangling is :P)

I have no idea what you are talking about.


I'd like to turn this discussion into a more productive direction 
(let's wrangle bugs, and not argue over who said what to who when).


First, I'd like to say thanks to those who put a great deal of care 
into bug-wrangling, and I think all will agree that Jer does a LOT in 
this regard.  It is very clear to me that when bugs get assigned to me 
that they've generally been well-triaged and I'm sure that a lot of 
cruft gets pruned before I even get an email.


That said, part of me wants to think aloud about whether we're 
over-investing in triaging bugs in the queue and this is leading to 
the queue getting out of hand.  The problem I see with our current 
bug-wrangling procedures (as documented on the official site) is that 
they seem a bit daunting to me.  I see this problem at work all the 
time - procedures that are very complex either need to be an assigned 
job, or they need to be simplified.  If they remain complex but 
free-for-all then nobody wants to touch them, since nobody gets yelled 
at individually if they don't step in, but if they step in and mess up 
suddenly they have egg on their face.


Something that might help would be a "one touch" bug queue (think 
Getting Things Done).  Wrangler looks at bug, and bug ends up in one 
of two categories IMMEDIATELY:
1.  Bug has required info and can be assigned to a maintainer.  Go 
ahead and assign.
2.  Bug is missing required info or seems vague.  Immediately add a 
comment stating what is needed, with link to website with bug 
submission procedure that wasn't followed, and resolve invalid. 
 Comment should welcome submitter to re-open with the required info.


This gets stale bugs out of the queue without a lot of fuss.  It also 
means that everything in the queue needs attention and nobody spends 
time reading a bug just to find out that it is stuck and needs no 
attention by a wrangler.


Also - I think we need to make other forms of triage a best-effort 
sort of activity.  If a wrangler wants to try to triage a bug they 
should be welcome to try.  If a wrangler notices a dup, they are 
welcome to handle accordingly.  If a wrangler misses a dup or doesn't 
do triage, that is fine too, as long as they either resolve invalid or 
assign.  That does mean a bit more bugspam for downstream devs, but it 
is pretty easy for me to spot dups for the packages I'm most familiar 
with, and it is much harder for a wrangler to spot them across the 
entire tree.


The overall goal is to make wrangling simple, but still a value-add. 
 We can leave room for those who want to do more.  If we end up with a 
big pool of serious wranglers they can just post on -dev saying that 
they've got things under control and then those less serious about it 
can step out and allow for more triage.  When the wranglers get 
underwater everybody else can step in and quickly clean up.


I guess the question is whether the resulting shorter queue and lower 
latency is worth the tradeoff in having package maintainers get a few 
extra bugs that might have been avoided in triage.  I'd be interested 
in Jer's perspective on how many bugs get squashed during triage.


Thoughts?

Rich


If it was just a case of checking if the right info was there then it 
could be done by a few reasonably-Gentoo-savvy volunteers who check the 
list a couple of times a day. Otherwise you're pretty much adding in 
just another step in the process which seems like the opposite of what 
you are trying to accomplish.


G

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Mike Gilbert]

On 12/28/2010 04:11 PM, Rich Freeman wrote:
> 2.  Bug is missing required info or seems vague.  Immediately add a comment
> stating what is needed, with link to website with bug submission procedure
> that wasn't followed, and resolve invalid.  Comment should welcome submitter
> to re-open with the required info.

NEEDINFO would be more accurate, but otherwise this makes sense.

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Dec 27, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Jeroen Roovers  wrote:

> On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:31:28 +0100
> Maciej Mrozowski  wrote:
>
> > Well, before I became developer, I had a quite unproductive
> > discussion on IRC with Jeroen on that matter (jer opting for status
> > quo and telling me I have no idea what bug wrangling is :P)
>
> I have no idea what you are talking about.
>
>
I'd like to turn this discussion into a more productive direction (let's
wrangle bugs, and not argue over who said what to who when).

First, I'd like to say thanks to those who put a great deal of care into
bug-wrangling, and I think all will agree that Jer does a LOT in this
regard.  It is very clear to me that when bugs get assigned to me that
they've generally been well-triaged and I'm sure that a lot of cruft gets
pruned before I even get an email.

That said, part of me wants to think aloud about whether we're
over-investing in triaging bugs in the queue and this is leading to the
queue getting out of hand.  The problem I see with our current bug-wrangling
procedures (as documented on the official site) is that they seem a bit
daunting to me.  I see this problem at work all the time - procedures that
are very complex either need to be an assigned job, or they need to be
simplified.  If they remain complex but free-for-all then nobody wants to
touch them, since nobody gets yelled at individually if they don't step in,
but if they step in and mess up suddenly they have egg on their face.

Something that might help would be a "one touch" bug queue (think Getting
Things Done).  Wrangler looks at bug, and bug ends up in one of two
categories IMMEDIATELY:
1.  Bug has required info and can be assigned to a maintainer.  Go ahead and
assign.
2.  Bug is missing required info or seems vague.  Immediately add a comment
stating what is needed, with link to website with bug submission procedure
that wasn't followed, and resolve invalid.  Comment should welcome submitter
to re-open with the required info.

This gets stale bugs out of the queue without a lot of fuss.  It also means
that everything in the queue needs attention and nobody spends time reading
a bug just to find out that it is stuck and needs no attention by a
wrangler.

Also - I think we need to make other forms of triage a best-effort sort of
activity.  If a wrangler wants to try to triage a bug they should be welcome
to try.  If a wrangler notices a dup, they are welcome to handle
accordingly.  If a wrangler misses a dup or doesn't do triage, that is fine
too, as long as they either resolve invalid or assign.  That does mean a bit
more bugspam for downstream devs, but it is pretty easy for me to spot dups
for the packages I'm most familiar with, and it is much harder for a
wrangler to spot them across the entire tree.

The overall goal is to make wrangling simple, but still a value-add.  We can
leave room for those who want to do more.  If we end up with a big pool of
serious wranglers they can just post on -dev saying that they've got things
under control and then those less serious about it can step out and allow
for more triage.  When the wranglers get underwater everybody else can step
in and quickly clean up.

I guess the question is whether the resulting shorter queue and lower
latency is worth the tradeoff in having package maintainers get a few extra
bugs that might have been avoided in triage.  I'd be interested in Jer's
perspective on how many bugs get squashed during triage.

Thoughts?

Rich

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 23:31:28 +0100
Maciej Mrozowski  wrote:

> Well, before I became developer, I had a quite unproductive
> discussion on IRC with Jeroen on that matter (jer opting for status
> quo and telling me I have no idea what bug wrangling is :P)

I have no idea what you are talking about.


 jer

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Dale]

Maciej Mrozowski wrote:

On Wednesday 15 of December 2010 17:03:12 Matt Turner wrote:
   

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."

  wrote:
 

By the way, we have a nice team of arch and herd testers - how about
encouraging them to wrangle some bugs?
   

Yeah, I just came here to say this. One certainly doesn't need to have
completed the developer quizzes to sort bugs.
 

Well, before I became developer, I had a quite unproductive discussion on IRC
with Jeroen on that matter (jer opting for status quo and telling me I have no
idea what bug wrangling is :P)

It all started by Yngwin's post:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-702248-highlight-contributions.html

Some ideas were proposed such as lowering requirements for bug wranglers or
recruiting them as staff (so bypassing ebuild quizzes).

   


Well, I would be willing to get my feet wet at least.  I'm disabled and 
been using Gentoo since the 1.4 days.  If someone would be willing to 
put up with a few screw ups I would make, I could give it a go.  If I 
really suck at it, you can kick me out.  ;-)  No hard feelings.   I'm 
not sure how much I can do but maybe enough to help some at least.


Someone is going to have to explain what I would be doing tho.  That or 
a really smoking hot link to explain it all.


< dale signs his last will >

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Maciej Mrozowski]

On Wednesday 15 of December 2010 17:03:12 Matt Turner wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
> 
>  wrote:
> > By the way, we have a nice team of arch and herd testers - how about
> > encouraging them to wrangle some bugs?
> 
> Yeah, I just came here to say this. One certainly doesn't need to have
> completed the developer quizzes to sort bugs.

Well, before I became developer, I had a quite unproductive discussion on IRC 
with Jeroen on that matter (jer opting for status quo and telling me I have no 
idea what bug wrangling is :P)

It all started by Yngwin's post:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-702248-highlight-contributions.html

Some ideas were proposed such as lowering requirements for bug wranglers or 
recruiting them as staff (so bypassing ebuild quizzes).

-- 
regards
MM


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Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Matt Turner]

On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 12:25 PM, "Paweł Hajdan, Jr."
 wrote:
> By the way, we have a nice team of arch and herd testers - how about
> encouraging them to wrangle some bugs?

Yeah, I just came here to say this. One certainly doesn't need to have
completed the developer quizzes to sort bugs.

Matt

Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Paweł Hajdan, Jr.]

On 12/15/10 2:54 AM, Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> I am starting to wonder if this is helping. It looks like everyone now
> attempts to keep it <100 on a daily basis, but not to far <100, which
> means a lot of old, difficult, nasty bug reports are left unattended.
> Still, I got it down to about two dozen now.

I was just wondering... did you get any e-mails from people who would
like to become Bug Wranglers? The main problem seems that the team is
understaffed, so we can't really fix the problem without recruiting more
people.

By the way, we have a nice team of arch and herd testers - how about
encouraging them to wrangle some bugs?

Paweł



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Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Mike Frysinger]

On Tuesday, December 14, 2010 20:54:45 Jeroen Roovers wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:00:02 +0200 (EET) Alex Alexander wrote:
> > Our bug queue has 118 bugs!
> 
> I am starting to wonder if this is helping. It looks like everyone now
> attempts to keep it <100 on a daily basis, but not to far <100, which
> means a lot of old, difficult, nasty bug reports are left unattended.
> Still, I got it down to about two dozen now.

i think people will aim for whatever arbitrary limit is picked.  so raising it 
to say 200 wont help either.
-mike


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Re: [gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Jeroen Roovers]

On Tue, 14 Dec 2010 14:00:02 +0200 (EET)
Alex Alexander  wrote:

> Our bug queue has 118 bugs!

I am starting to wonder if this is helping. It looks like everyone now
attempts to keep it <100 on a daily basis, but not to far <100, which
means a lot of old, difficult, nasty bug reports are left unattended.
Still, I got it down to about two dozen now.


 jer

[gentoo-dev] [warning] the bug queue has 118 bugs

[Alex Alexander]

Our bug queue has 118 bugs!

If you have some spare time, please help assign/sort a few bugs.

To view the bug queue, click one of the following links:
http: http://bit.ly/bsHeJt
https: http://bit.ly/8Z4xUU

Thanks!