Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hello Kevin, open bugs alone are never the issue. We can have millions of them open and still being able to manage things in sanely manner. So if the issue is not open bugs as whole, what it can be? Open bugs for specified area. Imagine you work on KDE, you fire up your bugzilla and start watching whats going on. Currently we have around 200 open bugs, which is manageable. But at one point we got nearly to 500 where we really lost any track of what the heck is happening. The goal should be that projects itself should focus and try to lower their bug count or introduce simple queries for their members to have reduced number of the bugs in their list. Open bugs are good, they are reminder that we should look to issues, even if it just means testing and stating that the things were fixed in meantime. Closing them would not solve anything. Only problematic parts of the bugzilla are unmaintained areas (herds) of the tree where the bugs have tendency to grow. The fix itself is not to close those bugs, but motivate some guys to work on that area and became developers so that bug number effectively became manageable. Cheers - Tomáš Chvátal Gentoo Linux Developer [Clustering/Council/KDE/QA/Sci/X11] E-Mail : scarab...@gentoo.org GnuPG FP: 94A4 5CCD 85D3 DE24 FE99 F924 1C1E 9CDE 0341 4587 GnuPG ID: 03414587 -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk2AhwcACgkQHB6c3gNBRYerUQCeIGkQg3hbEwdUCBMNqb6gTPlq Xo0AmgPF7zUHAkC0Lv8TdHTOU39mONAw =QSOi -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
On 20:25 Thu 10 Mar , Kevin F. Quinn wrote: > Hi all, > > I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed: > > * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000 > * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over > 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over > 2000 > > The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days > - over 6 years - at the time of writing. > > I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be > touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason > or another. All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla. > > > So I'd like to suggest a drastic, perhaps controversial action. Mark > all bugs that haven't been touched for over (say) 3 months as > "Resolved:Wontfix", with a polite comment saying that it is closed due > to lack of resource amongst the volunteer developer community. I do come back to bugs after years. They should not be closed if they are not fixed. "WONTFIX" for me means that there was a decision made that this will not be fixed, but that is not the case. +1 for the argument that 14000 open bugs is not a problem. Bugzilla is not something that needs to be clean and tidy. Closing them would generate a lot of work because of false positive while there is zero benefit. Cheers, Thomas > sure a suitable bugzilla script wiz could do that relatively easily. > Users who care about such bugs can still comment on them, or talk > directly to the assigned dev to highlight it's still a relevant issue > to them, or even to supply a solution against the current tree. > > It could be an ongoing policy, in which case, users who care about > them can keep bugs alive simply by posting useful updates to the bug, > describing how the issue still applies to a new revision for example. > > Just a thought from an old ex-dev... > > Kev. > > > -- Thomas Kahle http://dev.gentoo.org/~tomka/ pgpioJmdbT9Ph.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
On 10/03/2011 20:25, Kevin F. Quinn wrote: Hi all, I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed: * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000 * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over 2000 The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days - over 6 years - at the time of writing. I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason or another. All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla. So I'd like to suggest a drastic, perhaps controversial action. Mark all bugs that haven't been touched for over (say) 3 months as "Resolved:Wontfix", with a polite comment saying that it is closed due to lack of resource amongst the volunteer developer community. I'm sure a suitable bugzilla script wiz could do that relatively easily. Users who care about such bugs can still comment on them, or talk directly to the assigned dev to highlight it's still a relevant issue to them, or even to supply a solution against the current tree. It could be an ongoing policy, in which case, users who care about them can keep bugs alive simply by posting useful updates to the bug, describing how the issue still applies to a new revision for example. Just a thought from an old ex-dev... Kev. Why not give userrel a list of 2000 bugs from 6 years old to 6 months old to elcit help from the community? A dev could look why a user marked it cantfix e.g. "refers to outdated version of baselayout" and tick it off the list so it no longer appears. G
Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Kevin F. Quinn wrote: > Hi all, > > I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed: > > * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000 > * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over > 2000. > * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over > 2000 > > The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days > - over 6 years - at the time of writing. > > I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be > touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason > or another. All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla. > > > So I'd like to suggest a drastic, perhaps controversial action. Mark > all bugs that haven't been touched for over (say) 3 months as > "Resolved:Wontfix", with a polite comment saying that it is closed due > to lack of resource amongst the volunteer developer community. I'm > sure a suitable bugzilla script wiz could do that relatively > easily. Users who care about such bugs can still comment on them, or > talk directly to the assigned dev to highlight it's still a relevant > issue to them, or even to supply a solution against the current tree. I'm curious what the root problem is. In general I do not believe 'having lots of bugs open' is an actual problem for Gentoo. Is it hard to search for bugs? (new bugzilla search non-withstanding.) Are users upset that their new bug is a dupe of a bug that is already years old? -A > > It could be an ongoing policy, in which case, users who care about > them can keep bugs alive simply by posting useful updates to the bug, > describing how the issue still applies to a new revision for example. > > Just a thought from an old ex-dev... > > Kev. > > > >
Re: [gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
On 03/10/2011 02:25 PM, Kevin F. Quinn wrote: Hi all, I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed: * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000 * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over 2000 The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days - over 6 years - at the time of writing. I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason or another. All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla. I think Duncan has already covered the major points I was going to mention: particularly with respect to the fact that we are all volunteers and thus subject to resource constraints that other projects might not have. I realize that it is frustrating to a user to have a bug sit for a year (or more) without ever being resolved (or even looked at), but there is really only one way to resolve that: get someone who has the time and expertise to step in and fill the gap. Given that we can't exactly hold a gun to people's heads and MAKE them work on Gentoo stuff (nor would I personally be inclined to trust code produced using such methods), I really don't see another alternative. We closed a number of bugs related to SELinux recently; many of those bugs had been open for quite some time and things had changed sufficiently that we believed that the bug itself was no longer relevant, or we needed feedback from the user and didn't get any. Some of those bugs had been open for a couple of years. But we reviewed EACH of those bugs and made a decision on a case-by-case basis. I understand and appreciate the desire to close open bugs that are cluttering up the bugzilla. Not only do they create extra cruft for everyone to wade through, they also make Gentoo look bad (my GOD, they've got open bugs dating back to the founding of the Roman Empire!). However, I'm not convinced that blanket closing bugs that are over x days (weeks, months, years) is the best (or even desirable) approach. If a bug is related to a package that no longer exists, then it seems pretty obvious that there is no need to keep the bug around. If the bug is waiting on feedback from a user, and that user hasn't provided the requested feedback in, say, 60 days (after a bump to the bug) then I'd say that the bug is arguably no longer of importance to the user, or at least the email address we have on file for that user doesn't work any more. Beyond those two conditions, I'd really be loathe to close anything without good evidence to indicate that it either is no longer relevant, or it can't be fixed. Just my $0.02 (not adjusted for currency devaluation) Later, Gizmo
[gentoo-dev] Quantity of open bugs
Hi all, I was nosing through bugzilla, and noticed: * Number of open bugs is greater than 14,000 * Number of open bugs untouched for more than 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 1 and 2 years - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 6 months and 1 year - well over 2000. * Number of open bugs untouched between 3 months and 6 months - over 2000 The winner is bug #78406, which hasn't been touched for over 2240 days - over 6 years - at the time of writing. I would guess these old untouched bugs aren't actually going to be touched, ever - a lot simply won't be relevant any more for one reason or another. All they're doing is cluttering up bugzilla. So I'd like to suggest a drastic, perhaps controversial action. Mark all bugs that haven't been touched for over (say) 3 months as "Resolved:Wontfix", with a polite comment saying that it is closed due to lack of resource amongst the volunteer developer community. I'm sure a suitable bugzilla script wiz could do that relatively easily. Users who care about such bugs can still comment on them, or talk directly to the assigned dev to highlight it's still a relevant issue to them, or even to supply a solution against the current tree. It could be an ongoing policy, in which case, users who care about them can keep bugs alive simply by posting useful updates to the bug, describing how the issue still applies to a new revision for example. Just a thought from an old ex-dev... Kev.
